‘What’s Progress?’ : Desert Center’s 75-Year-Old Owner Is Cool to Change

In many ways this wide spot in the middle of nowhere is still in the 1930s.

The Desert Center Cafe has its same old repainted Depression-days sign, copied from an Albers flapjack flour package. It’s a silhouette of a burro, an old prospector sitting on a stump, holding a frying pan over an open fire with an old-fashioned coffeepot next to the blaze, with the desert and twin peaks in the background.

The cafe looks the same as pictures taken of it in 1932, a wrap-around counter with swivel seats, plain dining tables and chairs, a fireplace, a wall full of photos taken in Desert Center in the 1920s and 1930s.

An original 1934 Desert Center calendar hangs on a wall with this message: “Main Street 100 miles long. God knows you need us. Free room and board every day that the sun doesn’t shine at Desert Center.”

A faded 1932 Ford flyer tacked to another wall shows photographs and prices of that year’s new line of cars including a standard coupe ($490), a sport coupe ($535) and a station wagon ($600).

Next to the cafe is a lineup of no-longer-used, half-century-old, dust-covered gas pumps in front of the old, no-longer-used Desert Center Gas Station & Garage.

This place is a page out of the past. That’s the way Stanley Ragsdale wants to keep it.

“People blame me for retarding progress. My question is, what’s progress?” said the red-faced, silver-haired, 75-year-old owner of downtown Desert Center.

Signs proclaim “Population 120” at the Interstate 10 turnoffs to Desert Center, 60 miles of open desert and mountains east of Indio, 50 miles of the same west of Blythe.

The turnoffs lead to the cafe, a general store, an old-fashioned hotdog and hamburger stand, a modern gas station all owned and operated by Ragsdale, who also owns the local post office.

A two-mile stretch of land straddling the interstate belongs to Ragsdale. His property is half a mile wide.

“People have been telling me for years that if I build a motel, a bigger and better restaurant, a couple of fast-food places, Desert Center will boom. They say I’m sitting on top of a gold mine with all that interstate traffic constantly whizzing by,” he said.

Ragsdale sat in his 1930s office under a bumper sticker that read: “Desert Center. Where God Rested.” On a wall hung a photo of seven boys and girls piled into a 1919 Model T touring car with running boards and a crank hanging down under the radiator.

“I’m the one in the front seat with the cap,” he said. “That was the Desert Center school bus in 1925. My brother drove us 52 miles each way to Thermal and back across the desert. We were never late or missed a day.”

His mother and father founded Desert Center in 1921, where two ruts passing through served as a road. His father opened a garage that first year. When cars met, one had to pull off to a side to let the other pass. Frequently his father, “Desert Steve” Ragsdale, had to pull vehicles out of the sand. The road was finally paved in 1930 and became U.S. 60 and, years later, Interstate 10.

“Mama opened the restaurant in 1922. Desert Center Cafe has never missed a day of being open in all that time--more than 25,000 days. Since 1928 it has been open around the clock,” noted Ragsdale.

He never leaves town.

“I never go anywhere. Why should I? I love the desert. I know this country like the back of my hand. No one knows it better than me. The last time I was in L.A. was 20 years ago, Vegas, 30 years ago, Phoenix, five years ago. I need to be here to run the businesses.”

Ragsdale’s face is alive with skin cancer.

“The ultraviolet from the hot sun gets me,” he said. “People ask me how I stand it out here in the 100-to-120 temperatures in the summer. I tell them I enjoy the heat. If they’re from the Midwest or East I ask them how do you stand it back there in that awful cold, the blizzards, the tornadoes, the floods and all the rest of what you get.”