Harvey House, Barstow in Barstow Heights

This is Casa del Desierto ("Desert House"), designed as one of the Harvey House hotels by Mary Colter and built in 1911-1913. We visited early in the morning so couldnt get inside. But its worth detouring off Route 66 just to admire the exterior. A gem!

Very historical

Three great museums to seeRoute 66, space and railroad. Volunteers are awesome!

I had a great time sharing in the celebration of the Barstow Harvey House 75th anniversary. So much to see and do - it was a great party that lasted all day. Im really looking forward to going back soon and exploring more and taking some pictures.Ive been passing thru Barstow all my life with little stops here and there as needed but recently, Ive spent much more time there participating in local events. This has opened doors for me such as, being invited to the Harvey House celebration. Im discovering theres much more to Barstow than I previously thought. A community. A home town feel. Im not used to that. Where Ive lived for over 3 decades we just generate that feeling. Where I live is "unincorporated", without leadership and its always felt "used". Used in the sense that corporate entities provide our needs but at the end of the day they sleep elsewhere, somewhere better. With me?Im not implying that Im ready to move to Barstow just because of one good party. But the Harvey House is a great place to start experiencing Barstow considering all it has to offer.

Local place with a lot of history. A Highschool friend got married there recently.

This place is pretty cool, but quite a bit underwhelming. Definitely worth checking out if youre in the area, but Id say its not worth it to go out of your way.

A beautiful Bygone age of travel, would be a good place to take children, there allowed to climb on the trains with adult supervision Im guessing, wonderful preserved buildings.

Loved their gift/museum shop. Pls try and find out what the bucket was used for. Its a mystery to be solved. Oil Im guessing?

Harvey house and train museumIs great place to visitIs amazing to know and learn our historyto remember alwaysTo learn more about California history

The Harvey House in Barstow is a cool building to visit if going to the Barstow station to see the trains and historic rail cars. The historic building is unique and a great site to see.

It was closed due to the holidays but had train cars and a couple locomotives u can look at. Only sad part is that u can see that there was vandalism on several train cars. The building is nice piece of history that is beautiful to look at.

Well, prior to Covid this was an awesome place to visit. Today, in the middle of the week this place is a ghost town. The Route 66 museum is only open on weekends. The NASA museum is not open. The Train Station area is just now beginning to reopen. New management has taken over however the success of this facility is on shaky ground. If the next covid variant causes any additional shutdowns this facility may not survive. Due to covid this facility nearly went away. There are still issues right now with getting people hired to manage and operate this business.

Loved visiting this place to watch trains. I visited the museuem there but not tht much to see. They could do soo much more with this place if it was marketed properly and invested in more. This place sure could use a train themed restaurant for sure since there isnt much to do for food in Barstow. great place to watch trains from as up to 60 a day can come thru this gateway.

We were only able to see the two main rooms your website doesnt say only open on weekends but the nice guys that were working that day let us read the information on the walls about the Harvey Girls,and the station founders I will go back to see all of its architecture still there was wonderful

Very cool place. Rich in history and period decor.

Always a great place to take a walk and observe it’s unique scenery. I took the pleasure of visiting the museums before it temporarily closed due to COVID. I hope when it re opens people will book their events there. Fantastic staff and I love taking pictures and filming here.

This is a beautiful building, standing as a symbol of the Westward progression of the European settlers who founded this country. Constructed in 1885, it is one of the original Harvey House railside inns/restaurants/saloons. Though it stood long abandoned by all but hobos seeking shelter & local young people seeking adventure, in more recent years is has been lovingly restored to a good degree of its original splendor. It is worth a visit for its beauty, alone, but the Space Communication Center and the Route 66 Museum truly make this a destination.

Museum was closed for the pandemic. Picniced on a bench by the tracks. Beautiful historic building, grounds and old train engines and cars.

This place is adorable. The people that work there are super nice

If you like historical places the Harvey House is a must. The museum part is open on Fridays, Sat. & Sun. I happen to show up on Monday but the museum part was closed. As I walked around, I discovered the lobby part of the building was opened and spoke with the security guard. She was a wealth of info. on everything I wanted to know about the Harvey House(s). I was allowed to walk through two grand ballrooms that both served as dinningrooms long ago. I was also welcomed to walk around on the second floor and enjoy a NASA exhibit. I will definately go back when the museum portion is open!

Well worth a visit into a history most folks have never heard of.

DO NOT rent for events its too bad because its a nice venue unfortunately crooked people run it. If you do use them make sure you take your own pictures of every space and scratch and stain before and after your event. I had an event there and almost 2 weeks of calling for status of my deposit and getting the run around now there was damage that was done almost 2 months after the event. They keep deposits and because its an outside company that handles it not the city of Barstow even though they own the building the City uses that excuse to not take responsibility. They use True Liberty Protection Services which is supposedly a business located in Hesperia. Its a city building owned by the city yet they have a company outside of Barstow run it. City of Barstow is just so dirty and deceptive and so unprofessional I am sure someone is getting kick backs for deposits not being returned or so called "damage". No walk through was done before or after the event. No phone calls from the city nor true liberty to inform me of any damage only until I started calling about my deposit. I will never rent any city owned property here in Barstow for any events after this experience just terrible. Merry Xmas to me.

Very friendly people and enjoyed talking to them. So much history to learn from here and its a fascinating history. And for being a railroad buff, a great place to sit and watch trains.

Railroad museum was closed (its open only few days a weekso I didnt see that but the rest of the area has basically nothing interesting to offer.

Even though I had gone on day in which the museum was closed, I still enjoyed my visit here. The NASA exhibit upstairs was pretty cool and has many interactive touch screen monitors for information about space. The staff was very helpful and its always fun to see trains.

The Harvey House is a beautiful museum. It was fun to see a piece of history that is so well kept.

This is a nice small railroad museum housed in a train depot built in 1911. Trains constantly roll through the large railroad yard and Amtrak stops here for pickups. There are several old passenger cars displayed in the parking lot. There are lots of memorabilia in several rooms on the ground floor of this 3-story building and there is a nice model train layout. One can operate a train using a simulator, too. In addition to the railroad museum, the second floor houses the NASA Goldstone Deep Space visitor education center. Barstow is the closest location of one of only 3 dish antenna complexes of the Goldstone Deep Space Network (DSNused by NASA and JPL to communicate with manned and unmanned spacecraft. The other 2 locations are in Australia and Spain. There are stickers and posters to take for free. Be sure to ask the very nice guide/docent to emboss your poster with the dish antenna stamper! Finally, there is also a small route 66 museum and gift shop in another part of the building. All of this is free and Harvey House is close to the 15 interstate and, I believe, worth the time to visit. Stop by on your way in or out at Mega Toms burgers next to McDonalds for burger and fries.

Love coming here. Great museums annnd ive been told its even haunted. Harvey house is on an episode of ghost adventures.

I got there on a Sunday and it was closed I expected to have lunch or breakfast and it looks to me like they dont serve

Nice building, interesting lighting fixtures. Empty except for plaques about Harvey and the staff. Upstairs is info about NASA.

The railroad museum was one of the best around. Would stop again

The people that we met were very nice. museum wasnt open. more signage or directions to get there would be helpful. It wasnt the easiest to find.

So far we (Glen Clark from "Stories of the Dark" podcastgot to walk around the museums, and around the outside. We still need to go during the week to see inside. We love checking out old possibly haunted places.

When we got here we thought it was closed but the guard invited us in, she was so sweet and knowledgeable about the Harvey Houses. Not a lot to see but the chandeliers are worth the shop.

Went for a viewing, its nice except there are no signs telling where is what and what is where.

The Goldstone exhibit was especially interesting to see, as both my father and I had worked there.

Very nice and clean..

Great place to visit. Has Goldstone visitors center, trains, history!

Nice clean place, it was closed by the time we arrived. But still nice old trains there.

Lots of really cool railroad history. 9yo enjoyed it

I love historic buildings and trains. So a historic train station is always a delightful side jaunt on any road trip. I could only admire this one from the exterior as it was a holiday and closed. So sad!

This was an accidental find and then to also have a NASA museum upstairs was great

Beautiful place and so much history! The staff has so much knowledge to share. Everyone was friendly and very helpful!

Nice NASA exhibit.

This is a great place, either as a destination or to take a long stop while travelling. The train yard is very busy, with the trains right in front of you. There is also a train museum and many older trains on side tracks to look over closely. Also, Harvey Houses are a part of history. Train buffs, you need to see this.

Such a BEAUTIFUL place! I remember bringing my grandparents here to catch the train home to Kansas & now our daughter is having her wedding here! Lots of places for photo ops too, inside & out! Absolutely GORGEOUS architecture! The museums are worth checking out and the kids will love the trains 😍

Disappointing! Not much Harvey House memorabilia or information. You can rent it for events though. The Route 66 museum next to it is good! The train museum was closed though, they should sync up their hours.

Shouldve figured being in Barstow these people are sketchy, they give me receipts saying those werent the final amounts, makes no sense ,then they never answer the phone not even the owners cell phone, then they lie on the deposit return saying this and that so if u want to book this place and dont care about being lied too or getting your deposit back then this place is for you

I moved to Barstow 12 yrs ago. I volunteered at the Route 66 museum. There is another museum at the Harvey house called the rairoad museum. Both are very interesting. They have programs at the Harvey House where Astronaunts put on various programs regarding different planets etc. They use this historic place for special luncheons, dinners etc. If a person wishes they can be married there. Several train tracks are in front of the Harvey house and still used today. Great place of much historical value here.

There was a public event about the Jupiter probe exploration missions held here. If you are into space and Astronomy, the presentation by a JPL employee was educational and interesting. Very nice place too.