It was early spring in 2019, Cindy and Tony Jaquez and their crew moved cautiously around Ella’s Frontier Trading Post, a ramshackle building whose history whispered through its creaking timbers and faded paint. Once a celebrated stop along Route 66 in Joseph City, Ella’s sat dilapidated, an alluring hazard for curious trespassers who ignored the no trespassing signs and scrambled inside hoping to catch a ghostly echo of a bygone America.
On that day in March, Tony and a few locals had gathered not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity. They were there to dismantle the once-bright sign, “Ella’s Frontier” looming precariously above the entrance. It was a favor to Elaine, the elderly property owner who could no longer fend off intruders or shoulder the liability should the sign topple onto someone wandering where they shouldn’t.
Cindy said, “At that time we had no idea we would one day be saving the whole building.” At that moment, no one could predict the building’s improbable resurrection, nor the journey these splintered planks would soon undertake. Cindy says that the removal of the sign sparked comments from around the country both positive and negative.
Ella’s Frontier Trading Post had opened in 1927 under a different name, erected from telegraph poles by Fredrick “San Diego” Rawson, an eccentric former circus clown, poet and occasional taxidermist. By 1947, ownership shifted to Ray and Ella, who rechristened it as The Last Frontier. After their divorce, Ella gained full ownership in 1955, renaming the post once more this time as Ella’s Frontier Trading Post.
