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The Golden Age!
"Lions, Part 2": 1962-66
On New DVD
Five+ hours of
racers' "home movies" & hero
interviews ...
Video History
Of Hot Rods,
Dry Lakes,
Drag Strips &
Bonneville
This DVD's live-
action sound will
hurt your ears ...
"Cacklefest"
Plus '06 CHRR
Fuel-Car Racing
First & second
Bakersfield bashes!
1959 & 1960
March Meet
Highlights On
One New DVD
On tour in the
1960s & '70s!
"Funny Car Fever": 400 Photos by Steve Reyes
New old stock. Hurry!
Kenny Youngblood's "Memories Of El Mirage"
25 cars, just 20 bucks!
Bob McClurg's 10th Poster: "Fuel Altereds II"
"Is that my crank on the ground?"
'60s & '70s Custom Prints
From national stars to local losers, 1907-2006
A Century Of SoCal Action
'07 March Meet Photo Gallery
Super-model Mike Bumbeck's best
side
Men's formal wear: sweats, tanks, short- & long sleeve Ts.
Author Cole Coonce is one sick puppy!
272 pages of thrust-powered LSR heroes & zeroes.
Dig that '61 tail light!
By popular demand: official women's wear, only $15.95
Gillespie got it right!
Part One: From planning & ground breaking to 1962.
Crash 'n' burn for your coffee table ...
Steve Reyes's Big Book Of "Drag Racing Mayhem"
The Last Of The "Big Oranges": 1949-2007
Photography by Dave Wallace, ©2007
Oct. 2007: After these metal barriers and road-closed signs went up last summer, hardcore customers actually parked along northbound Highway 99 and walked to lunch -- until CalTrans ripped up the asphalt that previously connected 99 to Avenue 22, now a dead-end street. (Please see photo gallery for additional photos of the abandoned Fairmead, Calif., site as it appeared during this final visit.)
It's all over: The last of what we Californians referred to as "the big oranges" is locked down and boarded up alongside Highway 99 in Fairmead, between Chowchilla and Madera. Wooden picnic tables, covered in the crude initials and hearts carved by decades of teenage lovers and others, sit eerily in place. At first glance, the Mammoth Orange looks just like it did before and after business hours for more than half a century.
Upon closer inspection, however, the sole sign of life is the slowly-spinning wheel of an electric meter. The ancient electric mixer that demolished countless millions of local oranges is gone from its familiar spot atop the metal counter. So is everything else inside, except for a disconnected soda dispenser. Shucks, I said to myself, the Stiggins family could get this joint back up and running in no time.
Alas, the chances of that happening fell from slim to none last summer. Doris and Jimmy Stiggins, both in their 70's, and two generations of offspring hung in there even after the state's highway department closed off the adjacent east-west cross street that had bisected the former U.S. Highway 99 forever, thereby eliminating access for longtime customers coming from both the west and south.
Dec. 2002: Jimmy Stiggins is that rare restaurateur who successfully battled the fast-burger chains for 27 years. He and wife Doris and their children and grandchildren kept their Mammoth Orange open only briefly after bulldozers tore up the pavement out front, eliminating the majority of their business.
The family members were still flipping burgers -- and, ironically, feeding CalTrans crews taking breaks from destroying the business they'd operated since 1981 -- when the "road-closed" signs and reflective barriers went up along the eastern edge of 99, preventing northbound vehicles from pulling into the parking lot as they had since 1954. That's when the metal building was hauled here by its original female owner, behind a truck. According to Jimmy, the lady had it moved down the highway after five years of fierce competition from a cluster of big oranges closer to Fresno, arguably the center of the universe for orange-juice stands. Local legend has it that as many as 100 of them dotted 99 between Bakersfield and Sacramento before auto air conditioning became efficient and widely accepted.
After the barriers went up along northbound 99 last summer, some determined motorists defiantly drove or walked between them to get to the Mammoth Orange, briefly. Then CalTrans ripped up the asphalt along the highway, forcing a three-mile detour almost certain to deter a hungry passerby from driving to the next exit north, then backtracking on a frontage road. Instead, most motorists chose to proceed to the vast variety of fast-food-chain outlets a little further up 99. Only then did Jimmy and Doris and their grandson, Ira, give up the fight and hang up their aprons. After 58 years, the Mammoth Orange served its last burger around the first of August.
Dec. 2002: Business as usual at the Mammoth Orange, which had picked up a roof, an office and two restrooms since putting down roots here in 1954.
In the end, several years of petition signatures, Fresno Bee editorials and pleas by state Representative George Radanovich and Madera County Supervisor Vern Moss had no effect. In the early stages of their fight, the Stigginses received assurance from sympathetic California officials that their restaurant would be relocated to a nearby interchange at the state's expense. They couldn't believe it when the state subsequently switched positions and determined that, because the Mammoth Orange was technically still accessible to the public (if only from one surface street), it was not eligible for relocation, after all.
Complicating the scenario was a classic bureaucratic Catch 22: The long-term upgrade of this section of 99 from state highway to official freeway is financed and controlled by the feds, whose Washington chiefs evidently feel no nostalgia whatsoever for run-down burger joints shaped like misformed oranges. The Federal Highway Administration ultimately ruled that its funds were not to be spent on a relocation, and the state caved. "Federal highway officials said the project wouldn't have an impact on our business," Doris Stiggins told the Fresno Bee. Not everyone who lives here is fond of the place. To some snooty transplants from the San Francisco Bay area accustomed to spic-and-span chain eateries, the dilapidated Mammoth Orange and its blue-collar customers might be seen as unfortunate reminders of this booming region's poor, agricultural origins. Not long after do-gooder groups with names like Association For The Beautification Of Highway 99 and Highway 99 Task Force started appearing, around the turn of the century, crumbling buildings and faded signs started disappearing from the former federal highway that once connected Canada and Mexico. Only a thrillseeker could miss the last of 99's notorious intersections with surface streets. Motorists crossing or entering 99 from the road bordering the Mammoth Orange were required to wait for an opening between big rigs approaching at 75-plus mph; blast away from a stop sign, across the two northbound lanes of 99; slam on their brakes in the narrow center opening; then either race across two more lanes or merge into the fast lane, without benefit of a real on ramp. Oh, the T-bone crashes were always spectacular -- particularly when the Central Valley's infamous "tulle fog" rolled across this former lakebed, reducing visibility to zero. It's not hard to understand why federal and state planners wanted to put a continuous series of cement "Jersey walls" down the middle of their new freeway, nor why they wished to stop hungry northbound motorists from suddenly braking for burgers. Still, I felt a little sick when I saw the metal window flaps lowered at lunchtime, for the first time in 40-odd years of driving between L.A. and points north. While I can't say that I remember how the legendary Mammoth Burgers tasted before I gave up meat (a couple of decades ago), I think I'll miss the Mammoth Orange just as much as those carnivore truck drivers who rated it the best burger joint on Highway 99. Where will I go for a genuine orange shake, now that California's last big orange is gone?
Dec. 2002: Note the close proximity to Highway 99, which carries more north-south traffic than any other road in California, including Interstate 5. Jimmy and Doris Stiggins, who purchased the Mammoth Orange in 1980, were already expressing concern about proposed construction that would upgrade 99 from a state highway to a freeway, and possibly to a federal Interstate. (Donna Guadagni shot this photo of the author ordering lunch.)
Mar. 2006: Third-generation restaurateur Ira Stiggins was born in 1984 and went to work with his grandpa starting in 1987, at age three. He did everything there was to do in a roadside burger stand, but missed the boom time for "big oranges" by about 50 years.
Mar. 2006: Where else ya gonna get an orange milk shake? Truck-driving regulars insisted that this was the best fast-food menu along all 450 miles of Highway 99.
The Mammoth Orange put a happy face on a town that many people associate with the bizarre 1976 hijacking for ransom of a school bus on Avenue 21, and the subsequent burial of 26 young students and their driver in a sealed moving van with no ventilation. After 16 hours underground, the driver and a 14-year-old student pried open a lid in the van's roof and led the other children -- some as young as five -- to safety.
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