“Ah, remember the nights we would linger over brandy at ‘EAT’?” writes DraperyFalls on Reddit.
Well you can’t eat (or drink) anymore at EAT!
Because it’s permanently Closed.
The main photo of this article is one that has been bouncing around Twitter as part of a thread on abandoned places.
16. Abandoned restaurant in Victorville, California pic.twitter.com/nfbGDvUvvj
— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) August 17, 2024
We went looking for this romantic-looking eatery on Google Earth — in Victorville, California, as the Tweet says.
After 2 hours of driving on I-15 by Victorville via Google Earth, we found the cafe — it is not near Victorville at all. It is in a town called Halloran Springs — an hour-and-a-half’s drive North West of Victorville, in the Mojave Desert.
I-15 is the road you take from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
People on Reddit speak about this eatery. This part of the desert is considered the Meth capital of the US.
The photo was taken by Ed Freeman in 2018, and he is the one who mis-labeled the photo, stating it was taken in Victorville.
Halloran Springs
Halloran Springs has a wikipedia entry that at current writing doesn’t say much about the town. Other sources show that — besides providing a spring in the desert — the Halloran Springs area has a history in mining. Back in the early part of the 1900’s, Gold was the main lure to miners, and a huge amount of talc was also mined nearby. Turquoise was also abundant in the region.
But the EAT eatery and Lo-Gas gas station provided comfort for the many thousands who take I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The EAT eatery and Lo-Gas gas station was open as recently as the late 1990’s. Here is a picture of what it looked like in its heyday — in 1993, taken by Troy Pavia.
As Troy writes, “A late afternoon June monsoon, in 1993, when the gas station was freshly refurbished with a new set of islands, and the mechanic roved the steep grade with his tow trucks helping stranded motorists.”
Numerous people have done videos and stories on the abandoned eatery. Here is a more recent video of the location:
Here are other detailed videos of the EAT eatery and Lo-Gas gas station:
- Halloran Springs Abandoned EAT eatery and gas station
- EAT eatery and Lo-Gas gas station — where the viewer is careful of rattlesnakes.
Amazing Photos Here
Here is a site with terrific photos of the place:
Not for Sale
A quick check on both Zillow and LoopNet (for commercial real estate) shows that the EAT building is not for sale.
One can only imagine why its owners don’t have it up for sale — it for sure has gas tanks underneath the ground which state environmental laws might require to be removed, costing a new owner a ton of money, although California offers grants for small business owners to do so.
EAT Appears to Appear in the Movie ‘Girl in Gold Boots’
The eatery appears to appear in the movie Girl in Gold Boots, a 1968 movie about the seedy underworld of Go-Go dancing.
The main character is a young woman (Michele, played by Leslie McRay) who is working with her abusive father at a diner in the California desert on the road to LA — a diner that looks Very Similar to the EAT diner.
It’s an amazing movie — the girl quits her waitressing job when she meets a customer (Buz, played by Tom Pace, a young Regis Philbin look alike) who comes in to rob the place at gunpoint. He takes her to LA on the promise that he will get her a job as a dancer at a Hollywood nightclub. He lands her a job as a go-go dancer, and she soon learns he is heavily involved in the underbelly of the club scene as she becomes witness to the club’s drug trade and prostitution.
See the first 4 minutes of the film below, which is filmed at a diner that appears very similar to EAT:
EAT Was in the Rhino Video Catalog
The EAT eatery and Lo-Gas gas station was the filming location for the Rhino Video Catalog marketing video — seen at the end here:
Victorville a Cinema Buff Town
Meanwhile, Victorville, California — which is the town where the EAT eatery is NOT at — is known as the town where The Victorville Film Archives was located.
“At the very least Victorville was home to the infamous Victorville Film Archives before it was burned to the ground,” writes LeBron’s Fake Breasts on Reddit. “There is a surprising amount of movie history there. Now that the archive is gone, not even movie buffs want to hang around Victorville.”
Indeed, according to oncinema.fandom.com, the Victorville Film Archives was a world-renowned movie collection of film buff and On Cinema at the Cinema movie critic Gregg Turkington. It was thought to be the largest collection of movies in the world, almost all in VHS format, and housed in two storage units in Victorville, California.
According to oncinema.famdom.com:
- The collection was made possible originally after a former video rental shop offered to give away the storage units, filled with ex-rental VHS tapes, to Turkington in return for him taking the lease.
- This followed Turkington’s original vast VHS collection being partly destroyed by On Cinema at the Cinema host Tim Heidecker at the end of the Decker tv show‘s 2nd season — on which both Turkington and Heidecker starred. Decker was a web spinoff/tie-in to the series On Cinema at the Cinema.
- The new, massive Turkington movie collection was destroyed in a fire in September 2016, caused by a cigarette lit by Heidecker, who was seriously injured in the fire, and which also destroyed rare unseen tapes from series 3 of Decker. All very mysterious.
More on Victorville
“I used to live in Victorville in like 1997-2001 and it was a cool place to live where I lived in my little bubble,” writes JaneAustinPowers on Reddit. “I heard it’s shit now and everyone loves meth there. Sucks! There’s cool stuff near by, lots of deserted places to explore. Found horse bones and a rusted firearm in the desert once while walking with friends. Also, porn.”
Another Reddit writer whose name has been Deleted describes Victorville: “My wife’s niece lived in the middle of NoPlaceInParticular, Wyoming when she was told, ‘you get to go to California to stay with some relatives!’ She was stuck in Victorville for a week.”
Nearby Newberry Springs — Location of Bagdad Cafe
Meanwhile, the movie Bagdad Cafe was filmed in nearby Newberry Springs, which is about 35 miles northeast of Victorville, in the Mojave Desert. That 1987 movie is about a lonely German woman ending up in the most desolate motel on Earth and deciding to make it brighter.
“I live in the desolate space between Vegas and LA,” writes PeggyBackBitch on Reddit. “There’s buried houses in the river bottom, and an abandoned waterpark in Newberry Springs.”
The Area Has Been an Inspiration to Musicians
In the song “Ventura Highway” by the group America, songwriter Dewey Bunnell sings of “alligator lizards in the air.” That line came from his time in the California deserts as a kid. His father was in the military and his family moved around a lot. When in California he and his brother, new to the area, spent time in the desert finding things. From an interview in American Songwriter, Dewey says “My brother and I used to catch lizards and snakes all the time. There is an actual animal here called an alligator lizard. But this was also referring to a cloud formation, a shape. A long cloud that reminded me of an alligator lizard.”
Two decades later, the Psychedelic “Stoner Rock” Desert scene formed, famous for Generator Parties an hour’s drive from Palm Springs into the middle of the Mojave desert, where bands like Kyuss with Josh Homme and John Garcia would play all night until dawn. Homme later founded “Queens of the Stone Age.”
The Whole Area Is Fascinating to Explore
The area is rife with abandoned places to explore.
“My comment is likely to never get noticed,” writes AreABoob on Reddit. “But this area is absolutely fascinating. There are large portions of Route 66 here that used to be crowded with tourist attractions, strange ‘art pieces’, gift shops, and stop-n-shops all in the middle of a vast desert. The roadside is littered with a combination of abandoned saloon-type structures in the center of these roads, farthest away from populated areas, and modern mom-n-pop shops at the edges where you start venturing into small towns like Helendale.”
I-15 Is a Truckers’ Highway and Lifeline of America
In traveling I-15, you notice that it is full of truckers going to and from LA and Vegas. It is an economic pipeline — a lifeline of America.
The Halloran Springs EAT and Lo-Gas station has an old, abandoned Sante Fe railroad car. Sante Fe railroad was consumed by Burlington Northern years ago and renamed Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF). They still operate a railway that parallels I-15. The corridor with I-15 and the BNSF railroad is considered an economic lifeline — as described in this multi-state I-15 Alliance Master Plan.
Here is the BNSF railroad map of the area:
Be the first to comment