Beanery lunch counter opens at Kelso Depot Visitor Center

Date: April 3, 2009
Contact: Linda Slater, 760 252-6122

(Kelso, CA) – The Beanery lunch counter is open for business at the Kelso Depot Visitor Center in Mojave National Preserve. The counter’s operator, Mike Williams, is serving light food items and refreshments five days a week, Friday through Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The current menu includes spring, tossed, and spinach salads; bagels and spreads; ham and swiss, turkey and provolone, tuna, and vegetarian sandwiches; coffee, hot chocolate, soda, tea, water, and fruit smoothies; and ice cream, milk shakes, pie, and brownies.

Mojave NP’s superintendent, Dennis Schramm, said that re-introducing lunch counter service completes the historic dimension of the restored Depot.

“It has been a pleasure for us at the park service to help this much-admired building return to its position as a center of attention in the preserve,” Schramm said. “Longtime visitors and former residents are telling us that it’s just like it used to be.”

The lunch counter was a center of town life in Kelso from the time the Depot opened in 1924 until its closing in the mid-1980s. People who grew up in Kelso report that their families often took meals at the counter alongside railroad staff and passersby.

The Depot itself is a significant part of the history of ranching, mining, and railroading in the California desert from the early to the mid-twentieth century. The atmospheric old California building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 2001.

Plans call for expanding the menu eventually to include additional items, including plate lunches. Visitors can choose to have their meals at the restored horseshoe-shaped counter or at picnic tables on the grounds just outside the Depot.

Depot staff report a crowded lobby at midday since the Beanery reopened, with visitors occupying every counter seat and outdoor picnic table for the lunch hour, and many strolling in the lobby for the rest of the day, drawing out their milkshakes and light snacks. Military, former Kelso residents, and veteran desert travelers, especially, are spending more time at the Depot reminiscing about the Depot’s younger days, one park ranger said.

Mojave NP’s facilities manager Steve Carlson said restoring the Depot Beanery was a long and complicated process and that the result is a pleasure to see. He praised Williams’s perseverance in working to help bring it about.

“We appreciate his patience,” Carlson said. “And we know he’ll do a great job.”