Along old Route 66 in Oro Grande, California, the weathered remains of the Mohawk Mini-Mart are a reminder of a time when National Trails Highway carried a steady stream of travelers through the Mojave Desert. Located at 19324 National Trails Highway, the little roadside market and gas station was operating by at least the late 1940s, selling Mohawk gasoline along with the everyday necessities advertised across its walls: cold beer, wine, ice, food, groceries and cold pop.
By the time I photographed the building, the pumps remained but the windows and doors were boarded, and the business had been abandoned for many years. Yet much of its hand-painted advertising was still remarkably visible. The large MOHAWK MINI-MART lettering and faded signs give the building the feeling of a place simply closed for the evening rather than one left behind by decades of changing traffic patterns and the decline of Route 66.
In the years since these photographs were taken, the property has continued to deteriorate and parts of the old station have disappeared. That makes photographs of places like the Mohawk Mini-Mart more than pictures of abandoned buildings—they become small records of a roadside landscape that is slowly vanishing.
