Paul Bunyan Motel & Café, Lone Pine, California 1972

This wonderfully preserved scene from 1972 shows the Paul Bunyan Motel and Café alongside a Mobil service station on U.S. Highway 395—back when the road was the main lifeline through the Owens Valley and every traveler heading north or south inevitably passed through Lone Pine.

The Paul Bunyan sign, complete with oversized logging axe, reflects the playful roadside Americana common in mid-20th-century highway culture. On the roof of the stone-faced building sits a fiberglass steer, a reminder that hearty steaks and lumberjack-themed meals were part of the appeal for hungry motorists and film crews alike. The café was a popular stop for locals, climbers heading toward Mount Whitney, and Hollywood cast and crew working in the nearby Alabama Hills.

In the foreground, the Mobil station features the clean-lined architecture and bright enamel brick aesthetic typical of 1960s and early 1970s service stations. Gas prices—even without seeing the sign—would have been a fraction of modern levels, just before the oil crisis of 1973 pushed prices and lines dramatically upward. A selection of American cars and pickups occupy the forecourt, including a couple of well-used trucks that look right at home in a desert town built around ranching, film work, and tourism.

Scenes like this—simple, practical, and unselfconsciously roadside—capture a moment before the interstate era reshaped long-distance travel. Lone Pine, even then, felt like a gateway: part outpost, part rest stop, and part legend, cradled between the desert floor and the highest peaks in the continental United States.