A Route 66 ghost town was ‘frozen in time’. Is it on the brink of a comeback?

Newberry Springs was almost lost to the desert. But as America's mother road' turns 100, locals see hope that the boom times could return

The tiny desert cafe, caught in a desolate middle between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, had only been open for five minutes when the first customers of the day ambled in from the already blistering heat.

It was a Friday morning in June, sand swirling outside across the cracked street and towards the Bagdad Cafe's front door. In the same parking lot, a 1950s-era sign advertised a motel that no longer exists. In the distance, only a few surviving businesses remained: a small community center, a veterans organization and a long-standing roadhouse bar popular with locals. A few miles to the north, an entire neighborhood was abandoned in the 1990s after mounds of blowing sand swallowed it whole; today, only rooftops and chimneys peek out from the towering sand dunes.