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The intersection at which James Dean died on September 30, 1955, is within yards of the San Andreas Fault, which may be the source of the predicted Killer Quake that will devastate California. The little town of Cholame owes it's name to the Indians who lived here 10,000 years ago. At the time of Dean's death, the gas station/store was run by Paul Moreno, and his initials are still to be seen where he placed them in the concrete at the southeast corner of the surviving building. Torn down are the garage, and the bays where he kept his ambulance and towtruck. There is still some concrete rubble, all that is left of the garage where Dean's Porsche was towed, and where the Sanford Roth photos of the wrecked cars were taken.
In the mid-eighties, Roger Cannon of Carmel began to celebrate the highway and its connection to Dean with freeform zen-type car rallies. Vintage car enthusiasts began to make annual drives to coincide with the anniversaries of Dean's death. The town and the intersection appeared in the seventies Gumball Rally-type epic, The Junkman. I first visited the intersection and Cholame in 1968, before Ohinishi's monument was erected around the Tree of Heaven. The restaurant has gone through many hands since Moreno's time, but there have been remarkably few changes.
Traditionally, crowds gather at the intersection on the last Friday of September, and on the actual calendar anniversary of Dean's death. Matt and Glenn Grant, the grandson and son, respectively, of longtime Cholame postmistress Lily Grant, display Lily's collection of articles, artifacts, and letters, for the interest of the fans who come from around the world.
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