Ludlow Blues

Ludlow, California had its day, but not a whole lot more than that.

It's one of those places that showed up on the map of American history for our country's temporal equivalent of 5-6 seconds. Blip. Ludlow's heyday was actually about 25 years long - it served as one end of a short railroad line built specifically to move borax from one side of Death Valley to the other. Construction started in 1905, and by the middle of WWII, the tracks were torn up completely.

Now the only reason why Ludlow is there is because no one thought to remove it; the Ludlow Cafe is still open, there is a Dairy Queen, truck parking, a gas station that sells possibly the worst burritos in the country (trust me, I keep track), a skeevie motel, and, to top it off, it's in maybe the only dry county in California - so you can't even buy a beer in Ludlow (that's the blues). The data sheet on the city says it has a population of about 10 ... about 10. You'd think for a town with a population you could add up without even taking your shoes off it would be pretty easy to come up with a precise number. Apparently not - so it's about 10. (By the way, the above shot of Main Street in Ludlow, which technically is a part of the old Route 66, also includes our truck, in case you hadn't noticed.)

So, what follows is another of my little photo essays - this one entitled Ludlow Blues. The photo above is what's left of Ludlow's Mercantile building (why Ludlow ever needed a Mercantile building is beyond me). After that I'll let you decide what the buildings were for...post office, residence, brothel? Who knows? I included the photo of the old car radio I found in the middle of the Ludlow dirt patch just because I liked the look of it. And, for some reason, somebody seemed to be real concerned that people were going to do a lot of trespassing in Ludlow, so I included a couple of the many warning signs I found.

I also left the photo of the town plaque at the end just in case you're interested. Other than the pretty modern Dairy Queen, the plaque is probably the nicest looking thing in town. Rock on Ludlow, may you live long and prosper.