[4][6] Characterized in 1988 as "a little roadside place on the west shoulder of U.S. Route 93,"[3] Santa Claus receives traffic from motorists driving between Phoenix, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada, or Hoover Dam.

Others made plans during the 1950s to improve Santa Claus, which received publicity through the writings of American novelist and famed science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein and U.S. pioneer restaurant rater Duncan Hines and through 1961 remailing service advertisements offering to postmark letters from Santa Claus, for a small fee.

In July 1983, owner Tony Wilcox unsuccessfully offered to sell Santa Claus for $95,000, which was reduced to $52,500 by 1988.

In the 1930s, Nina Talbot[8] (not to be confused with the actress of a similar name) and her husband moved from Los Angeles, California, to Kingman, Arizona, to operate a motel.

[5] Talbot held herself out as the biggest real estate agent in California, but also weighed 300 pounds at that time.

[9] In the early years, Santa Claus presented a popular attraction and featured a U.S. post office and Christmas related buildings.

This helped draw celebrities to the restaurant, such as actress Jane Russell, who threw a dinner party there for ten of her friends on August 5, 1954.

[5] Santa Claus received some attention in 1961 when several advertisements appeared in the 1961 issue of Popular Mechanics,[11] an American magazine devoted to science and technology.

In 1988, Santa Claus had three tiny, poorly maintained A-frame buildings painted to represent peppermint candies.

A lopsided, artificial twenty-foot tree whistled in the wind beside a broken Coke machine and an empty ice freezer.

On a stool behind the countertop cash register, a haggard, fiftyish man looked up from his circle-the-word puzzle and asked if we needed anything.

Postal Service announced the release of its annual Christmas stamps in Santa Claus due to the town's holiday ring.

[13] In the early 1990s, the restaurant offered Dasher and Dancer omelette and Santa Claus burgers and oil portraits of John Wayne could be purchased from the shops.

[9] In that year, the town was identified as being located on the southward (western side) of the then newly divided and expanded, four-lane U.S. Route 93.

[15] In 2006, Santa Claus, Arizona, was noted as being abandoned and likely to become another lost American highway icon.

[16] In that same year, videographer Matt McCormick retraced and filmed the steps of his family road trip through Santa Claus in 1956.

[20] Residing in the Sacramento Valley basin, the ground water in Santa Claus is contained in a basin-fill aquifer and other water-bearing sediments at a depth of approximately 1,200 feet (370 m) below the land surface.