A monumental flight over Mojave Trails

Mojave Desert Land Trust aerial tour shows splendor of national monument whose status could be reassessed

Amboy Crater is a significant geological feature of the Mojave Trails National Monument. Last week, the Mojave Desert Land Trust hosted an aerial tour as part of the third anniversary of the monument. [James Quigg, Daily Press]

By Matthew Cabe
Victor Valley Daily News

PALM SPRINGS — Storm clouds hovered over the city and patches of rain fell from above the nearby San Jacinto Mountains, but two Mojave Desert Land Trust officials arrived at the international airport here last week ready for a celebration.

Staff at the Joshua Tree-based nonprofit recently completed plans to commemorate the upcoming third anniversary of Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains national monuments.

All three were established Feb. 12, 2016, by former President Barack Obama through use of the Antiquities Act. Combined, they encompass nearly 1.8 million acres in the Mojave, Colorado and Sonoran deserts.

To offer a comprehensive view, MDLT partnered with the nonprofit EcoFlight for a series of flyovers within the Mojave Trails National Monument, which boasts 1.6 million acres and is the largest national monument in the 48 contiguous states, according to MDLT Communications Director Jessica Dacey.

Shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, Dacey and MDLT Education Coordinator Adam Henne briefed a group of passengers that included a Daily Press reporter and photographer.

“You get a bit of a buzz when you go up there,” Dacey said. “Especially coming from this angle ... you start to understand the seamlessness between the parks.”

Tuesday’s flight traveled first above Joshua Tree National Park, then over Sheep Hole Pass, which served as the Cessna 210′s entrance into Mojave Trails.

For Dacey and others, part of the monument’s importance is its function as a wildlife corridor connecting the national park and the Mojave National Preserve, the more than 1.5-million-acre swath of National Park Service land between interstates 15 and 40.

Within the monument, the Cady Mountains serve as one of the best areas in the Mojave Desert to see bighorn sheep, according to MDLT.

The North American population of the muscular animal with curved horns was once estimated in the millions. By 1900, human encroachment diminished bighorn sheep numbers to several thousand, National Wildlife Federation statistics show. Conservation efforts have since brought those numbers up to nearly 8,000.

Bonanza Spring, located near the monument’s northern border, is the only wetland for 1,000 square miles. Like the Cady Mountains, the spring is also home to bighorns and 70 bird species.

Dacey said the habitat connectivity created with the monument’s establishment allows many animals to roam, helps increase their populations and protects plant life they need to survive.

There are also unique historical and cultural aspects to the monument’s significance, she said.

Mojave Trails is home to the longest undeveloped section of U.S. Route 66. Preservation of the “Mother Road,” according to the World Monuments Fund, would equal positive economic effects like “sustainable tourism.”

The monument also includes some of the best-preserved sites from the World War II-era Desert Training Center where, under the command of Gen. George S. Patton, more than a million troops were trained on 18,000 square miles for desert combat in North Africa.

Deep within the vast expanse visible through the Cessna’s starboard-side windows, another geographical feature appeared, albeit inconspicuously from 2,500 feet above the desert floor.

The Cadiz Dunes Wilderness spans nearly 20,000 acres in the heart of the monument. The dunes appear to “hum in the wind,” Dacey told passengers.

“I think they’re more majestic than the Kelso Dunes in the Preserve,” she said.

Bruce Gordon, who piloted the Cessna, nodded in agreement from behind his aviators. Gordon founded EcoFlight in 2002 to advocate for environmental protection via programs and aerial visuals that expand public awareness of wild lands.

He couldn’t help but take his hands off the Cessna’s yoke to capture photographs of the pristine topography below. He used the 80-minute flight to share his own knowledge of the region.

Several concerns were noted, as well.

One, MDLT contends, is Cadiz Inc.’s planned water project, which would pull 50,000-acre-feet of water a year from an ancient aquifer beneath the Mojave Desert. The water would later be sold in Southern California.

Cadiz owns roughly 34,000 acres within Mojave Trails, Dacey said. Company officials have said the pumping would not harm the environment. Rather, the project would conserve surplus water lost to evaporation at nearby dry lakes.

Cadiz’s research maintains that Bonanza Spring would not be impacted by pumping. Other research published in 2018 called the company’s findings into question and said the project would threaten Bonanza Spring, according to MDLT, which funded some of the research.

Cadiz CEO and President Scott Slater has stated the company is confident of no interconnection between groundwater and water levels in Bonanza Spring, the company’s website shows.

MDLT officials say the project could harm the bighorns that use Bonanza Spring. Dacey said a pipeline for the project has not yet been constructed.

Gordon navigated the plane toward Amboy Crater, situated about three miles southwest of Roy’s Motel and Cafe. At 80,000 years old, Amboy is “North America’s youngest volcano,” Dacey said.

MDLT is one of several environmental groups working to secure Mojave Trails’ status, which Dacey said is “in limbo.”

In April 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke — who resigned his post last month — to review national monuments of at least 100,000 acres that have been designated since 1996.

Trump’s goal was to determine whether the monuments needed reduction or elimination. Mojave Trails was subsequently included for review. Trump called the monuments, particularly Bear Ears National Monument in Utah, a “massive federal land grab.”

An initial report released in December 2017 included changes to 10 monuments. That same month, Trump signed proclamations that scaled back Bear Ears, as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In doing so, he declared, “Public lands will once again be for public use.”

Mojave Trails has not been altered, but Dacey said it’s never officially been declared safe.

When the monument was established, a management plan had to be drawn up by this month. That process was halted amid the Interior Department’s review. MDLT is part of a coalition working on a community proposal for a management plan. Dacey said the expectation is for it to guide future planning for Mojave Trails.

In 2016, visitors to Joshua Tree National Park more than doubled to over 2.5 million, prompting Park Superintendent David Smith to declare it was being “loved to death.” Dacey said attendance now is well over 3 million per year.

Amid the rise in popularity, as well as a massive clean-up effort underway in the damaged park following the partial federal government shutdown, groups are hoping to increase awareness of places like Mojave Trails as alternative destinations.

The question MDLT wants people to ask is, “What do these other public lands have to offer?” Dacey said.

From overhead, the answer seems simple enough.

Mojave preserve offers views and plenty of Joshua trees

The world’s largest concentration of Joshua trees grows in the Mojave National Preserve. (DEBORAH WALL/SPECIAL TO VIEW)

By DEBORAH WALL
SPECIAL TO VIEW

Beckoning seductively to city dwellers who long for elbow room, the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve lies in Southern California, barely an hour’s drive south of Las Vegas. While it has fewer than a dozen developed hiking trails, some of those are great ones. Among the best is the Teutonia Peak Trail, which boasts spectacular views of the east Mojave and beyond.

The moderate 4-mile round-trip trail takes you up to a steep outcropping on Cima Dome, at an elevation of 5,755 feet. The first section of the trail passes through the largest concentrations of Joshua trees in the world. While you will be hiking on the geologically interesting dome itself, the dome is best viewed from afar to see its almost-perfect symmetry, rising 1,500 feet above the desert.

From the signed trailhead, which is at an elevation of about 5,030 feet, follow the abandoned gravel road toward the obvious granite outcropping to the southwest. The first part of the hike is fairly flat and easy, so children will enjoy it. But once you’re hiking up the outcropping, it becomes more strenuous and extremely rocky with uneven footing, unsuitable for small children.

In the first mile or so, you will be surrounded by Joshua trees, remarkably odd but beautiful members of the lily family, with twisted, scaly limbs bearing long leaves only at their tips. They look like the fanciful trees in some children’s book by Dr. Seuss. Joshuas usually grow at an elevation between 2,000 and 7,000 feet, in sandy soil on flat or rolling terrain, so the foot of Cima Dome is one of their favorite places. Some along this hike are more than 20 feet tall. Other vegetation here includes yucca, cholla, blackbrush and Mormon tea.

After about a mile, you will come across timbers and mine tailings, evidence of an old silver claim. Take a glance, but stay away, as many old mines in the Mojave Desert are notoriously dangerous. Leave it alone and continue toward the outcropping.

Once up on the outcropping, follow the faint path along the ridgeline as far as you feel comfortable. The actual summit is difficult to access without a lot of rock scrambling. Indeed, you won’t need to reach it to take in the best of the far-reaching views. To the west, you will see the cinder cones and lava beds, which are part of the Cinder Cone National Natural Landmark, designated in 1973, and within the confines of the park. A bit past that, if you look carefully, you can even make out the world’s largest thermometer in Baker, Calif. Beyond, you can see the outline of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains.

To the south, you can see the Kelso Sand Dunes, and to the north, you can see Clark Mountain, the highest peak in the park, at an elevation of 7,929 feet. Clark sits just north of Interstate 15 near Mountain Pass.

While you are in the park, take time to head over to the Kelso Depot Visitor Center. The Mission-Revival style former train station was built in 1924 by the Union Pacific. The restored depot building is now the park’s main visitor center and has wonderful displays on the early mining and ranching history of this area, as well as Chemehuevi and Mojave Indian tribes. While trains no longer stop here, they roll through about once an hour. It’s a thrill to watch them from the station platform, thundering past at what appears to be full speed. And it’s safe to do so because a sturdy fence protects onlookers without obstructing their view.

The depot is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays through Tuesdays but closed Wednesdays and Thursdays. Its Beanery Lunch Counter is closed, so bring your own picnic supplies. There are picnic tables at the depot, but just about any location along one of the hundreds of side roads in the uncrowded preserve offers an inviting spot to spread a tablecloth. Gas is not available in the park, so before entering it, fill up in Primm or nearby Baker.

Deborah Wall is the author of “Great Hikes, A Cerca Country Guide” and “Base Camp Las Vegas: Hiking the Southwestern States,” published by Stephens Press. She can be reached at deborabus@aol.com.

Sleeping Beauty Valley: Heart of the Mojave Desert

Sleeping Beauty Valley (David Myers)

By James M. André and Ileene Anderson
Route 66 Pulse

In the heart of California’s Mojave Desert, at a place where the western Mojave transitions into the eastern Mojave, lies the Sleeping Beauty Valley. Encircled by the Kelso Dunes Wilderness and the Bristol Mountains Wilderness on the east, and the Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area on the west, the Sleeping Beauty Valley is one of the last remaining examples of pristine central Mojave Desert ecosystem. A place where one can still experience the scenic vista of an undeveloped valley surrounded by waves of rugged desert mountain ranges. Granted, the old Tonopah to Tidewater railroad grade is still visible as a reminder of the historic importance of this area in Mojave history – but very little else has changed in this valley for the last ten thousand years.

At the center of Sleeping Beauty Valley lies Broadwell Lake, a dry playa that is a remnant of the former extensive lake system that covered the Mojave during the Pleistocene. During the post-Pleistocene warming and drying, the valley became home to such iconic desert species as the desert tortoise which still calls the valley home. Due to recent rapid declines in desert tortoise population, these animals are considered threatened by both the state of California and the federal government. The Sleeping Beauty valley is a key linkage between the northern and southern populations of this increasingly rare animal and keeps both populations from becoming inbred.

Desert bighorn sheep traverse the valley from the rugged reaches of the Cady Mountains to the northern Bristol Mountains and beyond. Bighorn sheep depend on unimpeded access across the valley in order maintain viable herds in the adjacent mountain ranges.

The Sleeping Beauty Valley is home to more than 350 plant species, including several rare plants. Recently a post-Pleistocene relict plant species was “discovered” within the Sleeping Beauty Valley – the crucifixion thorn. This large and impressively spiny shrub is primarily leafless, as the leaves have been reduced to mere scales. It was much more common in the area that we now call the Mojave Desert during the wetter Pleistocene epoch, where its nutty berries provided food for such species and giant ground sloths and native camels. While those animal species died out or moved on with the warming and drying of the landscape, the crucifixion thorn persists along dry washes and edges of dry lake beds. The actual age of these plants is unknown because they have no “true wood” that can be cored and the rings counted. And though scientists have not studied this plant extensively, some believe it may well live up to 10,000 years.

In Spring of 2009, botanists discovered what is potentially a new species of lupine – those showy purple spring wildflowers that put up flowering stalks covered w/pea-like flowers. Specimens collected from the Sleeping Beauty Valley are different from the surrounding species, so additional scientific studies are being done to determine if it is a new species to science.

Why are all of these unique species found in the Sleeping Beauty Valley? In part, the lupine discovery underscores the fact that this region remains a biological frontier that is poorly documented. Botanists expect that additional inventory here will unearth considerable new discoveries to science. In addition, the valley lies within a fairly sharp transition zone between the western Mojave Desert, which enjoys more winter rains, but very few summer thundershowers and the eastern Mojave Desert, which counts on bimodal rainfall that includes some winter rains but consistent summer thunderstorms. Because of the differences in the rain regimes, the eastern and western Mojave deserts have some differences in the species that inhabit them. Because the Sleeping Beauty Valley lies at the crossroads of these two Mojave Desert regions, it supports plants and animals unique to the set of conditions found only at this transition zone..

In addition to its tremendous biological diversity, Sleeping Beauty Valley remains relatively unmarred by contemporary or historic human use. The T&T railroad grade is present, as is an existing powerline at the north end of the valley. The Old Dominion Mine is located on the western edge of the valley. Crucero Road, a washboard dirt road, originates in Ludlow and bisects the valley. Because the Sleeping Beauty Valley is relatively undisturbed by human activities, it is one of the few valleys in the Mojave Desert not yet colonized by invasive non-native plants that are so problematic ecologically in other areas of the Mojave Desert. Non-native plants are typically introduced with disturbance to the land caused by humans. From there, they often invade the landscape where they displace native plant species, decrease food and shelter available to animals, and have catastrophic effects on long-term natural ecological processes. For instance, weed invasions make the desert much more susceptible to large-scale fires that decimate those plant species unable to re-sprout after fire. Fortunately, the Sleeping Beauty Valley has very few non-native plants and has not been burned in recent decades. Indeed, it remains a rare example of a healthy and viable ecosystem.

The Sleeping Beauty Valley has immediate threats to its integrity. Applications for industrial scale solar and wind energy installations are rapidly moving forward, and will destroy tens of thousands of acres of rich desert habitat there. While the switch to renewable energy needs to happen to minimize global climate change, better places for industrial solar installations exist on disturbed lands close to the source of consumption, on roof-tops and over parking lots. Pristine desert lands at the heart of the Mojave Desert, like the Sleeping Beauty Valley need to be recognized for all their unique values and preserved.

James M. André is the Director of the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, UC Riverside

Ileene Anderson is a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity

Solar energy firm drops plan for project in Mojave Desert

BrightSource Energy's decision ends a battle with environmentalists over a 5,130-acre site in a proposed national monument.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Ending a bitter feud in the rush to develop solar farms, BrightSource Energy Inc. on Thursday said it had scrapped a controversial plan to build a renewable energy facility in the eastern Mojave Desert wilderness that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wants to transform into a national monument.

The proposal pitted companies queuing up to replace imported oil and facilitate a national clean-energy economy against environmentalists strongly opposed to the idea of creating an industrial zone within 600,000 acres of former railroad lands that had been donated to the Department of Interior for conservation.

The acrimony even triggered a nasty public squabble between Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior advisor at VantagePoint Venture Partners, which raised $160 million for Oakland-based BrightSource, and David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which raised $40 million to buy the old railroad lands to protect them from development.

"I commend BrightSource Energy for this action," Feinstein said in a statement. "It's clear that conservation and renewable energy development are not mutually exclusive goals -- there is room enough in the California desert for both."

Of particular concern was BrightSource's proposal to develop a 5,130-acre solar power plant on a portion of the donated lands known as Broadwell Dry Lake, which lies within Sleeping Beauty Valley.

The scenic, near-pristine region near Ludlow is home to a significant herd of bighorn sheep and framed by the Kelso Dunes Wilderness and Bristol Mountains Wilderness on the east and the Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area on the west.

Scientists continue to catalog plants and reptiles uniquely adapted to the scorched terrain in what remains a biological frontier.

For example, botanists recently discovered a species of lupine that features showy purple blossoms in the spring.

Biologists are also studying unusually dark lizards that appeared to have genetically adapted to the volcanic terrain.

On Thursday, BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs said, "We have ceased all activity at the Broadwell site. . . . We will not build inside of a national monument."

The company's announcement came as a welcome surprise to environmentalists.

"This creates an open playing field for the monument to be built," Myers said. "It also could herald a sea change in the solar energy industry in that people will better understand that that there are good and bad places to build."

Elden Hughes, former chairman of the Sierra Club's California-Nevada Desert Committee, described the company's announcement as "fantastic news."

"Broadwell is one of the most beautiful vistas in the desert," he said. "I've seen it covered with yellow flowers to the horizon in all directions."

BrightSource's proposal was one of 19 filed with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

BrightSource's project would have relied on hundreds of mirrors known as heliostats to focus the sun's rays on the tops of 200-foot towers, where water boilers would produce high-pressure steam and run electric turbines.

Wachs said BrightSource ceased activity at the Broadwell site "a few months ago." Around the same time, the company began seeking alternative sites for that project "in and outside of the state," he said.

"That's the best thing I've heard in months," said Gary Thomas, project coordinator for the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep.

"Of all the solar projects being proposed, this is the one that would have driven a stake through the heart of a herd of at least 200 bighorn sheep," he said. "We would have died on the mountains out there to stop it."

Separately, BrightSource is pressing ahead with plans to build a massive solar energy facility in the Mojave Desert's Ivanpah Valley, near Primm, Nev., just south of Las Vegas.

State and federal regulatory and land-use authorities say construction of the Ivanpah Valley project could begin as early as March.

Mojave National Preserve slated for stimulus funds

By ABBY SEWELL, staff writer
Barstow Desert Dispatch

BARSTOW • About $7.2 million in federal stimulus funds will go to projects in the Mojave National Preserve.

The National Park Service announced its list of about 800 park infrastructure projects totaling $750 million to be funded by the stimulus package Wednesday. About $97.4 million will go to 97 projects in California.

The projects in the Mojave National Preserve include installing solar panels on the roof of a park office in Baker and solar electric-powered lights in the maintenance yard, restoring habitat, gating off and closing abandoned mines, maintenance on back country park roads and spraying dust suppressant on Kelso Dunes Road.

“In general, this recovery act is going to help with deferred maintenance projects, it’s going to help visitors, and it’s going to provide jobs for local economies,” said park service spokeswoman Holly Bundock.

Bob Bryson, chief of resource management at the Mojave National Preserve, said the stimulus funds will allow the park service to carry out projects that have been in the works for some time but have lacked funding.

There has been a push from the Department of the Interior’s inspector general and from others, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to deal with the issue of abandoned mines in the parks, he said.

Bryson said the abandoned mines remain a popular tourist attraction and he was not aware of any deaths in mines in the Mojave preserve, but people have died in Death Valley and in other areas of the desert, including near Calico Ghost Town.

Bids must be awarded on the projects to be funded by the stimulus money by the end of September 2010, he said.

“It’s great we’re able to do things we wouldn’t be able to do (otherwise), but the problem is being able to do it relatively quickly, because after all, the idea is to be able to get the money out to the private sector and create jobs,” he said.

Bundock and Bryson did not have an estimate of how many jobs would be created by the projects in the Mojave. Bryson said most of the work would be contracted out to small businesses.

Officials in the park service’s Washington, D.C., headquarters looked at shovel-ready projects in the categories of construction, deferred maintenance, energy efficient equipment replacement, trail maintenance, abandoned mine closures and road maintenance, Bundock said.

California Desert national park units receive $20M

Wesley G. Hughes, Staff Writer
Contra Costa Times

The White House on Wednesday authorized $97 million from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for job-intensive work in California national parks, including more than $20 million for the job-needy Inland region.

Joshua Tree will receive more than $5 million, Mojave, more than $7 million and Death Valley, almost $8 million parks. The announcement details how the jobs will be created and on which projects.

At Mojave National Preserve, for example, there will be restoration of natural landscape and resource habitat, isolated uses of solar-powered lights and solar panels, temporary closure of multiple mines and spray Kelso Dunes Road with dust palliative.

Among the jobs at Joshua Tree are maintaining camp and picnic area sites; repair, treat and stabilize roads and trails parkwide and repair damaged section of 49 Palms Canyon Trail.

Death Valley projects include conversion of the Stovepipe Wells water plant to photovoltaic power and replace roofs on seven historic houses.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said, "I am thrilled that money from the economic recovery package will help improve California's national parks and ensure these treasures are preserved for our children and our grandchildren."

Mojave offers plenty of trails

TRIP OF THE WEEK

by Margo Bartlett Pesek
Las Vegas Review-Journal

The return of cooler months to the desert invites exploration of the sprawling Mojave National Preserve just over the Nevada border in Southern California.

Although the preserve contains few established foot trails, hundreds of miles of old roads and historic trails lead hikers, mountain bikers, cyclists, four-wheelers and equestrians to probe washes, canyons and mountains. Always carry at least a gallon of water per person and extra for your vehicle. Let a responsible person know where you are headed and when you plan to return.

Administered by the National Park Service since 1994, the Mojave National Preserve sets aside a huge portion of the Mojave Desert, the smallest and driest North American desert. The preserve encompasses a rough triangle bordered by U.S. 95, Interstate 40 and Interstate 15, plus an area north of I-15 near Mountain Pass. Many areas of the preserve are less than a three-hour drive from Las Vegas.

These highways provide easy access to the network of 2,200 miles of roads and trails into the interior of the preserve. Visitors can use passenger vehicles safely on major routes through the preserve, but many graded roads and dirt tracks require high clearance vehicles or four-wheel drive.

Before venturing off main roads, consult a good map. Learn about current road conditions at the preserve's information stations in California at Baker, Barstow, Needles, Nipton, Goffs Schoolhouse Museum on Route 66 or the visitor center in the restored Kelso Depot. Built in 1927, the two-story Mission Revival building served train crews and passengers on the Union Pacific.

Access the depot from near Nipton using the Morningstar Mine Road toward Cima and Kelso, the Cima Road from I-15 between Mountain Pass and Halloran Summit or from Baker on Kelbaker Road. The beautiful Kelso Dunes lie a few miles south of the depot. Visitors drive to them and park near the base of the 700-foot mountains of sand. Only foot traffic is allowed on these protected dunes. The soft, shifting sand precludes any defined trail, so it is a slog to the crest.

The Cima Road passes the trailhead to Teutonia Peak, a developed trail. Watch for an informal campsite at Sunrise Rock 10.4 miles south of I-15 on the Cima Road. The four-mile trail begins nearby on the opposite side of the road, cutting through an extensive forest of Joshua Trees, a signature plant of the Mojave.

Between Cima and Kelso, watch for the Cedar Canyon Road turnoff, an access to developed facilities, accessible from I-40 as well. Pavement soon turns to gravel through five flood-prone miles to the junction with Black Canyon Road. Turn south and look for a narrow two-mile road to Mid-Hills Campground, one of two developed campgrounds in the preserve.

Continue south on Black Canyon Road to reach facilities at Hole-in-the-Wall, named for strangely eroded rock formations. Developments include a ranger station, housing for fire crews, an equestrian group campground, a 35-unit RV and tent campground, and two additional walk-in tent sites.

Both campgrounds have tables, fire rings, parking pads, drinking water and centrally located toilets. Fire restrictions may be in force. Plan to use a camp stove for cooking. Camping fees apply, but no entrance fee is charged. Reservations are not accepted, except for the equestrian facilities.

A popular eight-mile trail connects Mid Hills and Hole-in-the-Wall. Hikers, bikers and horseback trail riders often start from Mid-Hills, which sits 1,200 feet higher than Hole-in-the-Wall. They park transport vehicles at the visitor center/ranger station for the ride back, unless they want to do 16 miles roundtrip.

The singing dunes

DESERT RATTLER



By Ken Layne
LA City Beat




"Buddy"


On a cool morning, no deadlines, empty house, I throw a sleeping bag and two bottles of wine in the truck and head up the 15. The interstate is relatively sane, what with the crashing economy and $4 gasoline. Plus, it’s early Saturday morning. The Vegas-bound mooks headed out on Friday night.

The AM real-estate show from Las Vegas says everything’s “bad and getting worse.” I switch to the Mojave National Preserve information station once I see the sign in Barstow. There’s something about a scratchy recording of a lady ranger reading aloud from a Park Service brochure. She lists all the terrible ways one can die on a routine desert outing, and how to prevent them: Bring water, wear a hat. Goddammit, where’s my hat? I stop at a Baker gift shop next to the old Bun Boy-turned-Big Boy diner, the giant thermometer letting people know what it’s like outside of the car, and find an ugly camouflage Chinese-sweatshop wide-brimmed hat for $12 that just barely fits my skull.

Minutes later, the simple concrete Mojave National Preserve entrance sign welcomes me to 1.6 million acres of extraordinary desert. There is no entrance fee, no line of RVs, no Park Service booth, no Smokey Bear ranger to hand you a brochure. The frantic hassle of Interstate 15 and the Vegas-L.A. corridor is gone, immediately replaced by silence and creosote and sand, the Marl Mountains rising up to the southeast and Kelso Peak straight ahead. It is one of those Panavision Western Widescreen Views, and it’s just a few minutes away from one of the busiest interstates in the West, and if you stop your car in the middle of the two-lane to investigate a Red Racer snake zooming along the roadside, there’s nobody around to complain.

What I need to see is a desert tortoise, in the wild. I started coming out here in the 1980s and I’ve never come across one of the Living Fossils. I must see tortoises, while we still have some. They used to be so common in springtime that campers would fill their pockets with the babies and imprison the gentle critters as backyard pets.

But it’s too late today, and the sun is already cooking through the morning cloud cover. I try various dirt roads, put on my dumb hat, walk down washes and trails, seeing many burrows but no actual shelled denizens.

Time to hike the Kelso Dunes. I take Kelbaker Road across the Union Pacific tracks – America’s busiest freight corridor runs through the middle of Mojave National Preserve – while it’s still cool enough for a pleasant walk. It’s a gorgeous 79-degree Saturday and there are no cars parked at the trailhead. When you add Las Vegas and Phoenix to the mix, 30 million people live within a few hours’ drive of this magnificent park, and nobody’s here. I don’t know whether to laugh or curse. Ah, right. I laugh.

These are Singing Dunes. They make strange music, punctuated by strange booms. I trudge through clouds of sand-colored grasshoppers, the sand whistling like some melancholy gypsy violin. There are brave and beautiful flowers still bursting from these harsh sand hills. Some are tiny and lie close to the ground, others are bursting from brush and stem and dune weeds housing happy little birds. I see a vague movement under a fuzzy gray bush, and hold my camera over it. A Mojave fringe-toed lizard shakes its tail and dives into the sand.

After I’ve trudged back through the sand, I see exactly two cars – an elitist Subaru and four-wheel-drive BMW – parked at the trail head. The occupants must’ve taken another route up the hill. What to make of this scarcity of people upon these rare lands set aside for people to enjoy? Why isn’t anyone outside?

The trail and the campfire used to be common ground for common middle-class people, just two decades ago. Now we’re bored of silence, scared of bugs, terrified of snakes, and only understand wildlife in lurid teevee terms. “Toddler eaten by hungry coyote five years ago; fat mom was inside stripping for Web-Cam.”

Gasoline prices and the current Economic Collapse play their part, but the abandonment of the unmotorized outdoors has been happening since that other George Bush was president. The U.S. population has added 75 million people since the 1980s, the decade in which human use of national parks, national forests, and state parks peaked.

Up at dawn, I’m headed down Morningstar Mine Road, in the northeast part of the preserve, the Ivanpah Valley, looking for tortoises, looking for a dirt road just beyond the power lines, but end up over the railroad track and nearly to the mine. I backtrack, fail, and finally give up and take the dirt road beneath the massive high-tension double power line towers that cross this valley like giant robot monsters on their way to destroy Los Angeles.

There’s a mild buzz, from the electricity surging through those lines a hundred feet above me. This is absurd. Coke cans and beer bottles and a rubber mudflap from a pickup truck line the sandy utility road, it’s all horrible ... and there’s a tortoise, lumbering along. I shut the engine, grab my camera, get out as slowly and quietly as possible, and approach the desert tortoise.

He (she?) looks up, blinking in the sun.

“Don’t mind me, buddy,” I say, snapping pictures. “Just getting your picture. For the yearbook.”

Blink.

It’s a full-sized adult tortoise, beautiful burnished brown plates, fine patterns, and shiny varnish. About two feet long, eight inches tall, the elephant feet strong and steady. This one’s been breakfasting on little yellow flowers, one sitting atop the shell.

I head down a jackrabbit trail away from the power lines, to give it space. I count a hundred burrows in a few minutes of walking, noting the fresh tracks outside many of them, and the perfect situation of flowers and desert grasses growing just outside of so many of them, the tortoise’s personal salad bar.

But it’s already too hot, and for the moment the sky is perfectly clear and blue, and there’s no breeze or shade. I should’ve been up an hour before dawn. Driving slowly back to Nipton, I watch the rocky road shoulders. There’s another one, munching baby-blue flowers a foot away from the pavement. Good god, man, get off the road!

I pull over and walk back to see this buddy. It is shy, unlike the first one, and retracts head and legs into a yellow-green shell. We have no business moving them, for their own safety, as the tortoise has a peculiar habit of pissing itself when frightened – and that urine is its water supply during the long dry summer.

There’s one more tortoise on the roadside, crushed by a car.

Booming Sand Dunes

By Elise Kleeman Staff Writer
San Gabriel Valley Tribune [West Covina CA]

PASADENA - In about 30 of the world's deserts, the shifting sands create a booming noise that has baffled scientists for decades.

Early explorers imagined the strange rumbling sounds - roughly an octave and a half below middle C - as the cries of a buried horseman, or the bells of an underground convent.

Others have described it as the sound of musical instruments, or the drone of an airplane. Exactly how it happens, though, has long been a mystery.

"It's a really remarkable and weird phenomenon," said Christopher Brennen, a Caltech mechanical engineer. "When sand squeaks, we call that chirping: for example, when you walk along dry sand at the beach. But the booming of these dunes is different."

With ground-penetrating technology, cobbled- together sampling tools and some help from the seat of their pants, Brennen and his colleagues believe they have found the key to the sand's deep voice.

They have been studying the rare singing sands at two nearby dune fields: Kelso Dunes in Mojave National Preserve, and Dumont Dunes 30 miles north of Baker.

One requirement for their music, the researchers have long known, is for the sand to be on the move.

This can happen naturally as winds pile sand up one face of the dune until it avalanches down the other.

But to make the desert boom on command, the researchers have adopted a decidedly unprofessional-looking technique: climbing to the dune peak hundreds of feet above the desert floor and scooting down on their behinds.

If conditions are right, the result is the same.

"You can feel it vibrate through your fingers and your toes when you stand," Brennen said. "The whole dune vibrates."

French scientists had theorized that the booming was caused by scores of similarly sized sand grains rubbing together as they rolled. The bigger the sand grains, they believed, the lower the sound.

But samples that the Caltech team collected showed that that hypothesis "didn't really make sense," said mechanical engineer Melany Hunt.

"That's not what we think happens on the sand dune," she said. "The frequency that we hear ... really is determined by the characteristics of the dune itself, not just by the grain sizes."

Hunt compared the dunes to her daughter's cello.

"In the cello, you're strumming the string but it's the whole instrument that's vibrating," she said. "We think it's similar in the dune."

The breakthrough for the Caltech team came when they used ground-penetrating radar and other imaging techniques to spy on what was happening beneath the desert surface.

They found that although sound travels slowly through the top layer of sand in the dune, "when you go down to a depth of six feet, you find there is kind of a hard layer that has a much higher speed sound," Brennen said.

That layer works to reflect sound waves back toward the surface, he said.

As the noise of the tumbling sand grains bounces around within the top-most layer of sand, Brennen said, certain low frequencies appear to become amplified, creating the mysterious boom.
This speaker effect can only happen, Hunt said, if the dunes are enormous and bone-dry.

The deserts therefore boom their best in the scorchingly hot summer months, making the research hot, sweaty work - perhaps the one drawback to sliding down sand dunes in the name of science.

Exploring Nevada’s sand dunes

Uncovering the mysteries of the hillsides in the Southwest

By Shirley Robinson, Staff Writer
The Rebel Yell
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Sand that makes music; vast dunes frozen in time; a living tarnish that spreads like a rash across hillsides; aquatic animals that seem to spontaneously appear out of puddles; boulders that blow across the ground. Although these features may sound like something from an oddball alien planet, they’re not. They are all found in and around Southern Nevada – a scientist’s, a child’s and a mystery-lover’s playground.

Among Nevada’s and the Southwest’s most striking characteristics are those smooth, shadowed mounds of sorted sand known as sand dunes. Grains from past, disintegrated mountains are gathered by strong winds and are often deposited against natural barriers where the winds die down. Grains that are very small, such as fine silts, remain suspended in the air and are carried off and aloft.

Although the grains comprising most dunes are pale-colored quartz crystals, streams of black sediments are frequently seen feathered within the peaks. These darker minerals are often heavy and iron-rich, and they are able to be transported along with the quartz sand due to their fine-grain size. Twirling a simple kitchen magnet within the sand may quickly attract a mass of iron filings. One of the most enchanting aspects of sand dunes is the ability of a select few to emit sound. Reports of this phenomenon have poured from all corners of the globe for hundreds of years with some likening the sound to that of a kettledrum or low-flying aircraft and others to that of a trumpet or harp.

It is thought that the sound of these musical sands, which are often called “singing” or “booming sand dunes,” is created from the movement of the quartz crystals as avalanches are triggered either by the wind or by dune travelers. The synchronized sliding of the polished grains emits a rumble, squeak or roar that reverberates across the dunes and can be heard for miles.

More than 30 locations across the world, from Morocco to Hawaii, feature singing sand dunes and over a half dozen of those are found in Nevada and California. Located 100 miles southwest of Las Vegas in Southern California’s Mojave National Preserve, the 45-square-mile Kelso Dunes are among the West’s most popular and highly studied singing sands.

With the exception of the Nellis Sand Dunes, located north of Nellis Air Force Base, the Las Vegas Valley lacks extensive dunes. However, geologists have concluded that this was not always the case.

Vast, barren sand seas (ergs) comparable to those of the Sahara Desert are thought to have blanketed the Las Vegas Valley and much of the Southwest with thousands of feet of sand. Evidence for this lies in the fiery-red cliffs and rounded outcrops of the ever-popular Red Rock Canyon west of Las Vegas. (Although now solid sandstone, petrified over time, the area’s formations were once soft, spilling dunes.)

Las Vegans tend to treasure these “fossil” dunes as their area’s own unique attraction, but the sandstone that makes up Red Rock is also present in the Valley of Fire State Park in northeastern Clark County. It is also in Zion National Park and at Lake Powell in neighboring Utah. Although known as the Aztec Sandstone in Southern Nevada and the Navajo Sandstone in Utah, the red rock is all believed to have been part of the same giant desert dunes.

Distinctive characteristics held by the Aztec and Navajo Sandstone include the streaks of red, orange and purple that stain the outcrops. These color bands are thought to be caused by the circulation of water through the quartz grains after they were petrified; the water essentially rusted the iron-rich minerals within the solid dunes, creating oxidized works of art.

Water has also taken its toll on the structure of the petrified dunes. Rainwater dissolves the cementation between the grains. Moisture also hydrates wind-blown salts that work their way between the sand grains, which swell and consequently pry the sandstone apart. Bizarre geologic forms result, such as deep, smooth hallows, rounded piles of boulders and towering, but teetering, balanced rocks.

Although they no longer look like dunes, the solidified remnants show undeniable evidence of being deposited by wind. Sediments that are carried and laid down by water tend to be stacked into fairly flat-lying planes or beds. The grains of the Aztec Sandstone, however, lie in gently curving, multi-angled layers (or cross-beds), suggesting that shifting winds of the past swirled the once loose sands and deposited them upon the dynamic slopes of restless sand dunes.

One may notice that some surfaces of the old, smooth and sculpted Aztec Sandstone is blackened and almost charred-looking. Although wildfires frequently ravage the desert and can indeed darken rock outcrops, the most probable cause behind these coatings is a life form rather than a flame. It is theorized that microbes living on the rock surfaces trap wind-blown dusts (clay, pollen, etc.) and cement them together with dark manganese and iron oxides. The oxides are thought to be leached out of the host rock, mobilized and concentrated by the microbes, creating the black, laminated film which has been termed “desert varnish.”

As one can imagine, the environment on a dry Mojave Desert rock is far from hospitable – becoming searing hot during summer afternoons and freezing cold during winter nights. Despite the temperature extremes, the microbes stay alive by going into a state of dormancy. Research has shown that the hardy little life forms explode with activity and create layers of varnish only during times of rain. Since precipitation is scarce in the desert, there are only a handful of days out of the year during which the microbes work. It therefore requires many years for varnish to accumulate; the older the coatings are, the thicker and darker they become.

It sounds rather far-fetched that life can survive in a torpid state for extended periods of time without water in such a harsh climate, but the phenomenon occurs more often than people might think.

One of the most amazing and surprisingly prevalent examples of dormancy lies buried beneath the fine silts of the dry lakes and playas throughout the Southwest. Microscopic eggs of a crustacean, known as the long-tailed apus, withstand the drought and heat of sun-baked mud-cracks for months, hatching only when heavy rains bring life-giving puddles to the seasonal lake beds. Adults, which reach two inches in length, mature rapidly as they have very little time to lay their eggs before the water soaks into the thirsty ground and evaporates into the hot air.

Although they have hatched out of the soils of several areas for centuries, these ephemeral creatures were first discovered within the Dry Lake of Eldorado Valley in1936 by a girl from nearby Boulder City, Nev. The news of rain-puddles teeming with life quickly drew local children with jelly jars hoping to catch their own early version of “Sea Monkeys.” Specimens were also collected by curious adults and sent away to various scientific organizations. Definitive answers about the mysterious species came in 1947 when Swedish naturalist Folke Lind identified them as A ”pus Longicauditus,” a tadpole shrimp often found fossilized in sedimentary rock.

Dry lake beds and salt-crusted playas, which form at the base of broad, desert valleys where fine silts accumulate, are among the most level surfaces on the earth. Hence, they make for ideal landing strips and are sought-after for racing high-speed craft. The dry Groom Lake of Lincoln County, Nev., home of the remote test facility “Area 51,” has one of the world’s longest run strips, and the Black Rock Desert, in northwestern Nevada, served as the racetrack on which the current land speed record of over 760 mph was achieved.

One of the most famous playas, however, is known for the “racing” of something other than top-secret aircraft and jet-powered cars. Located within California’s Death Valley National Park, “The Racetrack,” attracts thousands of flabbergasted “spectators” each year with its evidence of cobbles and boulders sliding mysteriously across the playa surface. Although no one has ever actually seen the rocks move, undeniable tracks, left in the now desiccated mud, trail the scattered subjects, which weigh up to 80 pounds.

Individual tracks have measured over 2,000 feet in length and tend to indicate that the rocks follow a straight coarse while traveling. Some, however, have sudden hairpin turns, and many show signs of rolling, tumbling and colliding.

Some investigators propose that the rocks become frozen within thin sheets of ice that are driven across the playa by winter winds. Most scientists, however, believe that the gusty winds of any season which happen to blow across the playa after a recent rain can propel the rocks. It is believed that the slick mud washed in by flood waters create unbelievably smooth surfaces on the flat playas across which wind can travel incredibly fast at ground-level. Stones just a few inches high can be blown across the slippery surface.

Southern Nevada is in the heart of one of the most mysterious regions on earth. By stepping out and exploring its natural wonders, we may unlock the secrets of the Southwest.

Under Kelso's dusty top layer is vivid history

A boarded-up post office and restored depot dot the landscape in Kelso. The town attracts as many as 400 people a day to explore the Kelso Dunes and the visitor center. Photo by Greg Vojtko / The Press-Enterprise

By DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
The Press-Enterprise

KELSO - Tim Duncan was not quick to jump nine years ago when the National Park Service asked him to leave his job as a ranger at the Manassas Battlefield in Virginia and move to the dusty and nearly deserted outpost of Kelso in the Mojave Desert.

He had visited California once on vacation, and drove the desolate stretch between Needles and Barstow.

But he took the assignment, in part because one of the Park Service's attractions has been the opportunity to work all over the country, from Alaska to Virginia, he said.

Duncan, 50, has come to love his home in Kelso, hidden against the Granite Mountains. The nearest civilization is in rural Baker, along Interstate 15, some 30 miles to the northwest.

"I enjoy the quietness, I enjoy the remoteness, I enjoy the terrain," he said. "I enjoy the railroad community and the visitor center, which has just been restored."

He was referring to Kelso's 15 other inhabitants: Union Pacific Railroad employees who maintain the track between Barstow and Las Vegas. And to the two-story rail depot officially reopened in March as a visitor center for the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve.

The visitor center, renovated at a cost of $5.5 million, has fostered something of a renaissance for a town that was founded in 1905 as a water stop for steam-driven trains, boomed as a mining town during World War II, and has been little more than a ghost town ever since.

As many as 400 people a day venture off Interstates 40 and 15 on weekends to sift through the artifacts on display here. They also explore the nearby Kelso Dunes, where weather-polished grains of sand emit an eerie, growling boom sound as they cascade during avalanches.

The only other visitors Duncan sees are the motorists who are detoured through town when traffic accidents prompt the California Highway Patrol to shut down one of the interstates.

"The traffic backs up for 50 miles," Duncan said. "It's a slow crawl, and I have to go out and make sure it keeps moving."

How Kelso Came to Be

James Woolsey, chief of resource interpretation and outreach for the preserve, likes to amuse visitors with the not-so-compelling story of how Kelso got its name.

Three railroad surveyors took turns naming the stops, he said. Only two of them were on hand at the Kelso founding and they decided to throw their names, and the name of the third guy, into a hat and choose one for the town.

The name they drew? "The guy who wasn't there," Woolsey said.

He is not certain how often John Kelso visited his namesake, or whether he ever visited it.

When the first trains started running, Kelso had a small store and a few-dozen residents, including a smattering of gold and silver miners.

Soon after, the railroad built a roundhouse to service them and parked half a dozen extra locomotives to help the engines make it up the grueling 19-mile, 2,000-foot grade to Cima.

"That's what made Kelso," said Theo Packard, 95, who moved to the town with his parents in 1920 and stayed for a quarter century.

"Sometimes, the trains were so long, they had to hitch on two or three helpers to make it," Packard said.

Kelso had about 200 residents then.

"It was just a regular, work-a-day town," he said. "Mostly, we worked."

A Busy Little Place

Packard's father opened a general store that doubled as the post office. There were no saloons.

Packard attended Kelso's one-room school, which closed in the 1970s. The building, which still stands, was home to the town's one big social event: a monthly dance where the railroad workers, ranchers and miners converged to foxtrot and waltz.

"They had a kind of a makeshift orchestra," he said. "My mother played the piano."

The school had one teacher who instructed students through the eighth grade, after which they commuted by train to Barstow or Las Vegas to attend high school.

The massive two-story depot, which would eventually house railroad workers, restaurant employees, and telegraph and baggage workers, was constructed in 1924.

Four passenger trains a day, two each in the early morning and evening, stopped in Kelso to load up with water and feed the passengers.

The telegraph operator was something of a gossip, Packard remembers, and would pass the word when celebrities were on the way. Packard ran down to the station one day to meet silent-movie cowboy Tom Mix and look at his horse in the baggage car.

Kelso's "boom" came at the start of World War II, Woolsey said, when iron ore-mines in the area supplied raw material for the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana. The plant, in turn, turned out steel for the Liberty ships that ferried beans and bullets to Europe during the war. At one point, the town had 2,000 residents.

By war's end, Kelso was on a track to oblivion. Packard left to seek work for a rail delivery service.

'Tin Cans and String'

Today, Kelso has no general store, no restaurant, no movie theater and still no saloon.

Duncan has two freezers and drives to Las Vegas once a month for supplies. He says it's quicker than going south to Barstow and there is a wider variety of stores, which saves trips.

Only a few of the railroad workers are in town at any given time, he said. Their only entertainment, he said, is what it has always been: They get together every now and then to have dinner.

That isn't all that's stayed the same. The telephone at his ranger station has a scratchy signal and frequently cuts out, like poor cell-phone service.

"The lines, the equipment, everything, is 50 years old," Duncan said. "I guess they don't see the need for improvement. We're on tin cans and string out here."

Not exactly the way he likes it.

Video: A history of Kelso, the once flourishing railroad town in the Mojave Desert

Depot restored

Park service renovates historic station in Mojave National Preserve

By DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
The Press-Enterprise

Items from early ranching activities in the Mojave Desert are on display at Kelso Depot southeast of Baker. Greg Vojtko / The Press-Enterprise

The National Park Service on Saturday will show off the $5.5 million renovation of the historic Kelso Depot as a museum and information center for the Mojave National Preserve.

Once a Union Pacific Railroad showpiece to rival Santa Fe's rail station and Harvey House in Needles, the two-story depot southeast of Baker houses 10 exhibit rooms filled with information about desert wildlife, plant life, American Indian artifacts and rooms restored to look as they did before the depot closed in 1985.

There is even a sound-enhanced exhibit describing the nearby Kelso Dunes, where the grains of sand are polished so smooth by nature that they make a booming sound as they cascade downward during avalanches.

As many as 400 people a day have been visiting the depot since its soft opening in November, says James Woolsey, chief of resource interpretation and outreach for the 1.6-million-acre desert preserve. He expects the flow of visitors to increase after Saturday's formal dedication and grand opening.

The depot, which had been open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. four days a week since the soft opening, has expanded to seven days a week, he said.

Saturday's event will include tours of the nearby dunes, reminiscences by former Kelso residents and performances by cowboy poets, an American Indian band and the Needles Select Choir. Among the invited guests are U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who helped secure federal funding for the renovation.

The depot was built by the Union Pacific in 1924, when extra steam locomotives were kept in Kelso to help pull trains up a 2,000-foot grade to Cima 20 miles away. The 23 upstairs rooms in the depot were railroad crew quarters. The downstairs served as everything from a ticket office and community center to laundry and restaurant.

At its peak during World War II, more than 2,000 people lived in the desert outpost of Kelso as passenger trains passed between Las Vegas and Los Angeles and freight trains carried iron ore to the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana. Today, the trains carry no passengers, Woolsey said. An average of one train an hour passes through on the three sets of tracks.

When the railroad closed the depot, vandals invaded.

"They broke all the windows, smashed the walls and painted graffiti everywhere," Woolsey said. "They took all the furniture, stripped out the fixtures and tore up the staircase."

They even stole the toilets.

"The railroad wanted to tear the place down, " Woolsey said. "They bulldozed all the old houses along here because they didn't want to take care of them.

"A lot of local folks got very upset when they proposed tearing this place down," he said. "It's a very stately building and an important piece of the history of the desert."

In the late 1980s, Union Pacific sold the depot building to the federal government for a nominal fee. The Bureau of Land Management boarded up the structure to prevent more damage until its future could be decided.

A big part of that decision was the passage in 1994 of the Desert Protection Act, which established the Mojave National Preserve.

"There was a lot of discussion about what to do" with the park, Woolsey said. "But the one thing everybody agreed on was what to do with the Kelso Depot. A visitor center was the obvious thing. It's a beautiful building. The paved roads (Kelbaker and Kelso Cima) come together here, so it's a perfect location."

The restoration of the building started in August 2002 and was completed in January 2004, said David Moore, a landscape architect for the National Park Service. He helped supervise the work.

"It was in such bad shape that they had to take the whole structure almost down to the frame," Moore said. "We had a specialist from our Denver service center do some research and he was able to come up with the original drawings of the building."

So much conduit had been run through the studs supporting the east wall of the building that the supports were weakened, he said.

"You could go up to the wall and push it and watch the whole wall wiggle," Moore said. "It was scary."

Restoration crews also discovered that the original contractor wrote his name at the top of the staircase and some workers had stuffed postcards in the walls.

Woolsey said the Park Service will install equipment in the kitchen and hopes to find a private vendor to reopen and run the restaurant. He said the Park Service will hire a third ranger to help staff the depot and is recruiting unpaid volunteers.

The depot sometimes gets a boost in visitors when traffic problems cause the California Highway Patrol to shut down Interstate 15 and reroute vehicles through Kelso, Woolsey said.

Synja Meyneken, 63, a tourist from the Netherlands, found her way to the depot recently. "We like nature and more or less go for nature parks," she said. "We were just driving around. We decided to travel for a year, so we bought a pickup truck and we're doing the states."

Meyneken's favorite part of the depot was the saddle mounted in one of the rooms surrounded by murals showing old-time cowboy life. She climbed into the saddle and her husband took her picture -- tipping the camera to just the right angle to show her and the saddle and the backdrop without revealing the absence of a horse.

Bob Carlisle, 59, and his wife, Rita, 60, pored over the exhibits, the maps and the décor. "The building is nice," he said. "I can't figure the depot yet. Why a train depot in the middle of the desert? I haven't figured it out yet."

Kelso Depot building renovation and tour

Backward Glance

by Steve Smith
Desert Dispatch

Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part story.

One of the first projects I worked on as a volunteer at the Mojave River Valley Museum was a picture search for the displays at Kelso. James Woolsey came to the museum and talked about what they were looking for. He also showed me the plans. I must admit the plans didn't mean much to me at the time, but now that I can go to Kelso Depot, I have a sense of pride at my small contribution and I now can see what those plans were leading to.

Work on restoring the depot started in 1999. The first stages of the restoration was to gut the building. As is often the case, lead-based paints were used in the building and had to be cleaned out. During the clean up it was discovered where the building needed extra construction work. They also uncovered a few surprises. In the walls was discovered time cards from kitchen employees, old batteries and small wires that powered a doorbell system that ran to the upstairs sleeping rooms.

Once the tearing apart was done, they had to rebuild. The plan was to do the best job possible to bring the depot back to its original state. Most of the original wood trim and doors were salvaged. The great old staircase was stripped of enamel paint revealing the beautiful wood underneath. Everything was carefully researched and made to look as original as possible. The one addition to the building is the elevator, which allows visitors access to all three floors of the building.

One good example of the meticulous work is the red awnings over the second-story windows. These awnings were on the building when it was first built. A few years after that the awnings were removed. So now when you look at the exterior of the depot you are getting a close as possible view of the building as it was when it was built.

The first sight as you come in the front door is the Beanery counter. It is restored to how it looked originally, only smaller. All of the wood has been stained, and even the pie case has been brought back. The only thing missing is someone to serve you. The National Park Service is looking for vendors to run the counter. From what I have heard of the number of visitors that have come to the depot recently it should be a good business opportunity.

The old front counter is also in the room and is manned by staff. This is the place to ask questions and find out what is going on in the preserve. Behind the counter is the room that introduces you to the desert with sounds of the desert playing in the background. These are very realistic. During my visit I went outside to take some pictures and heard what I thought was the recording but in looking around I saw the bird singing.

What I liked about the depot (heck, it should be called a museum) is that all the senses are taken care of. There are soundbased displays on the booming of the Kelso Dunes and recordings of Curtis Howe Springer, the evangelist who sold mineral cures and ran the health resort at Zzyzx. There are also displays that let you try lifting a railroad tie and using a tool to move a rail road wheel and kids can actually climb a saddle in the ranching section. Smellwise you can enjoy the fresh air outside the depot or the diesel fumes of the passing trains.

The Mojave Preserve is a big place and is full of interesting history and the depot represents everything there. At the depot you will find rooms dedicated to ranching, the railroad, Route 66, the people who lived at Kelso and samples of what the sleeping rooms looked like in Kelso's heyday and many more interesting displays. One of my favorite places in the building is the reading room upstairs. This is a small library with all sorts of information regarding the preserve and maps, old and new. If you are planning a trip into the preserve this is a good place to see what is out there and to learn about the great resources in our backyard. Of course after you go around in the desert, you can sit in the comfortable chairs and nap like I did at the end of a long day.

Welcome back, Kelso

Restored depot proves popular

Chuck Mueller, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

KELSO - With renovation work barely complete, the 81-year-old Kelso Depot already is drawing throngs of visitors from around the world who want to step back in time.

The stately depot, surrounded by a mosaic of mountains, serves as the main visitors center and museum for the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve 60 miles east of Barstow.

It is attracting as many as 300 visitors on Sundays and about 100 on weekdays. And since 1998, the total number of visitors to the park has soared from 315,000 annually to 615,000.

"The building has been restored virtually as it was when the Union Pacific Railroad closed it in 1985," said James Woolsey, the preserve's chief of resource interpretation.

The exterior of the structure gleams in a sandy decor with turquoise trim as it once was. Inside walls are pale yellow with dark stained woodwork.

Kelso is on Kelbaker Road about 35 miles southeast of Baker. It can be reached from both Interstate 40 and Interstate 15.

International travelers like Keith and Christine Mitchell of Brighton, England, interrupted their trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to visit the preserve Thursday. They were happy they did.

"The desert is fantastic," said Keith, port supervisor with a British ferry service. "There's nothing like this back home except for the white Seven Sisters cliffs at Veachy Head."

As the couple entered the depot, Christine exclaimed, "This is really unique. It brings back a touch of the Old West."

Unique it is, indeed.

Interpretative exhibits on the first floor highlight the region's natural features, such as the Kelso dunes and Joshua Tree forest, and displays of wildlife like the desert tortoise. Native wildflowers and models of park creatures like the sidewinder rattlesnake and kangaroo rat are exhibited.

Visitors can press a button to hear a booming and moaning sound that radiates from the 700-foot-high dunes as thousands of grains of sand rub together.

Also on display is a vintage ticket and telegraph office, with the photocopy of a 1905 train register and hoops to allow depot crews to exchange messages with passing trains.

"We tried to keep the character of the structure, with much of the original building intact and lovingly restored," Woolsey said.

He and Park Ranger Linda Slater searched far afield for authentic artifacts, century-old photographs and original furnishings.

"We talked to desert oldtimers and went to eBay, other railroad museums and the Union Pacific," Woolsey said.

A painting of a buffalo that once hung on the wall over the Beanery, the depot's U-shaped lunch counter was found and brought back to Kelso.

The $5 million renovation project, funded by Congress, began in 2002 after three years of planning and research, Slater said.

"We got a lot of cooperation from many people - oldtimers, ranchers, railroaders, miners and Indian tribes - in putting the exhibits together," she said. "We're all proud of our achievement. It took a lot of dedicated effort."

Larry Whalon, the preserve's acting superintendent, said Kelso Depot provides a close look at the history and lifestyle of the region between 1920 and 1980.

"What makes this building special is its authenticity," he said. "It's important to tell about Mojave National Preserve and its people. The exhibits here do that, and that's why they are so relevant."

The stories of homesteaders and ranchers are told in the recorded voices of people like Cima Postmaster Irene Ausmus, store owner Theo Packard and rancher Tim Overson.

And the voice of Curtis Howe Springer, a radio evangelist who praised healing salts mined at Zzyzx, tells visitors about the heyday of the resort off I-15 near Baker.

Widespread response to Springer's radio broadcasts from Zzyzx between 1944 and 1974 turned Baker into California's busiest post office.

The depot housed up to 40 railroad workers from 1924 to 1985, Woolsey said. For recreation, they played billiards and card games in the basement.

Marine Staff Sgt. Joe Ramirez paused Thursday to scan the volumes in the depot's bookstore.

"I'm a history buff, and I enjoy stopping here while driving to the base at Twentynine Palms," he said. "I'm pleased that the Park Service has restored this landmark for posterity."

Within a year, visitors to Kelso Depot can expect to munch on peanut-butter cookies and apple pies like those featured a half-century ago at the Beanery.

Said Slater, "We're doing our best to bring back the depot's rich past for everyone to share and enjoy."

Depot a desert diamond

Mary Manning
Las Vegas Sun

About an hour and 45 minutes southwest of Las Vegas, the two-lane Cima Road leads from Interstate 15 into Southern California's Mojave Desert.

Miles of Joshua trees, yucca plants and creosote bushes dot the landscape until the horizon gives way to what at first seems like a mirage: a two-story salmon-colored building, its Spanish-style arches rising from the desert floor.

The train tracks next to the building help explain its existence.

Union Pacific built the mission-style building as a depot in 1924. It was close to the halfway point between Barstow and Las Vegas. Nearby Cornfield Spring was a reliable source of water, crucial to coal-fired steam engines.

After years of being left to dry up and blow away, the Kelso Depot in the heart of the Mojave National Preserve once again is welcoming desert travelers.

It has been transformed from a train station into the preserve's visitor center with a museum, historically furnished rooms, a theater and a bookstore.

The depot's U-shaped counter is to start serving meals again in March when the grand opening is scheduled. The counter was popular with passengers who had been riding the rails in trains without dining cars in the early 20th century.

Beginning in March the depot will stay open seven days a week. It actually opened late last month, on a 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule, Thursdays through Sundays.

The word is starting to get out that the depot is already open. More than 200 people visited the depot on Sunday, for example.

But with the grand opening still four months away, visitors can still catch some quiet days at the depot. On those days, the silence after leaving the car in the crushed gravel parking lot is almost overwhelming. No leaves rustle, no water drips and unseen insects hum instead of buzz.

Kelso has long been known largely for a sound. Eleven miles southwest of the depot are the Kelso Sand Dunes, known for their "singing," a haunting bass tone made by the shifting sand.

"The best way to get them booming is to run down them as fast as you can," said National Park Service Ranger Linda Slater, who has been renovating the depot for four years.

A recording of the dunes "singing" can be heard at the new museum. It's one of the features that make the Kelso Depot Information Center perfect for the curious who do not want to linger in the Mojave.

As it did in its former life, the depot continues to serve as a respite for travelers. Patches of grass relieve the desert landscape at the center. Nearby are blossoms of desert wildflowers that attract birds, bees and butterflies.

Inside the depot, the walls are adorned with quotes about the desert such as: "For all the toll the desert takes of a man, it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of stars," by author Mary Austin.

The exhibits include denizens of the desert mounted under glass: the Mojave Desert tortoise, a scorpion, a sidewinder snake, a kangaroo rat.

There's a 500-year-old clay pot, probably made by a Mojave Indian; woven baskets and drawings of other desert tribes; informational displays of the area's volcanic and anthropologic history.

Statler said more exhibits are possible. The Park Service would like to eventually turn the empty basement into a Children's Discovery Center with interactive exhibits, for example.

At one time the basement held a pool table and piano for entertainment -- not only for the rail passengers and workers, but for the miners and others who lived in Kelso.

When the United States entered World War II, Kelso boomed. Miners extracted iron ore from mines in Southern Nevada and Southern California and sent it by rail to wartime factories.

"At that time, around 1,000 people lived here," Statler said. The town had a one-room school, a post office and a grocery store.

But after the war, Kelso withered and most of the buildings crumbled into dust.

The depot weathered the years, but since it was no longer needed for the ever more efficient diesel trains, it was closed in 1986, and Union Pacific made plans to demolish it.

In 1991, the federal government, responding to public pressure, stepped in to save the building. The renovation took years.

The original color scheme emerged after workers scraped layers of paint away, Statler said. A "putrid green" covered the depot's interior until white paint and shiny dark wood trim resurrected the original look.

To restore an authentic look to the station's hub -- the ticket and telegraph office near the baggage room --Statler perused eBay and found period pieces: an accounting book, baggage tickets, pencils, an early 20th century stapler and candlesticks.

An average of 60 trains a day still chug through Kelso, compared with 100 in Barstow, Park Service volunteer Vince Marino said as freight cars rumbled past and shook the depot's red-tile floor.

For most people the Mojave Desert is a place to only pass through. But it also has always been a land of dreams attracting tourists, miners, ranchers, train crews and artists.

One such person is Ken Hall, a National Park Service worker who has spent most of the last 40 years in the Mojave's dry air. Hall lives in Baker, a 70-mile round trip from his work at the depot.

Before people swarmed into the Southwest and settled up and down Interstate 15, Hall frequently brought his children to the depot to loll on the grass and watch the passing trains.

He said he stays on the job to "to take care of my desert for my grandchildren."

Hall has driven trucks for Gilbert Trucking of Las Vegas, managed the Denny's Restaurant in Baker and served in the Air Force in Yuma, Ariz., before he settled for life on a road that seems to go nowhere.

After describing the spectacular sunrises with a sigh, Hall takes a cup of coffee and walks out the backdoor, ignoring the satellite hookup feeding a fully stocked entertainment center.

"I prefer the silence," he said.

Kelso Depot

Where: Take Interstate 15 from Las Vegas to the Cima Road exit. Kelso is 35 miles south of Baker, Calif., on Kelbaker Road.

When: The center is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Starting in March, it will be open seven days a week.

Cost: There is currently no entrance fee for Mojave National Preserve.

For more information: (760) 733-4040.

National Park Service Web site: http://www.nps.gov/moja/home.htm

Source: National Park Service

Mojave milestones

Braving the perils of the historic road -- and nearly succeeding.

By Susan Spano, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

A bullet-riddled street sign on Old Mojave Road marks a turn near the Piute Range. (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Baker, Calif. — Some people love the desert. They love it at 110 degrees with the AC off. They love rusted junk, abandoned mines, sand traps, rattlesnakes, old bones and dry washes. You're pretty sure they're touched until you go there with them, as I did in October with my brother, John.

He'd been wanting to drive the 130-mile Old Mojave Road, a dirt, rock and sand path across Mojave National Preserve that passes landscapes you don't get to see on paved roads. It was the historic route from the Colorado River to Barstow for Native Americans, explorers, stagecoach drivers and the Army.

When the railroad laid tracks to the south, the old road was all but forgotten until Dennis G. Casebier, a Navy physicist from Corona with a passion for desert history, decided it should be re-opened for recreation.

In the early 1980s, the Friends of the Mojave Road, founded by Casebier, mapped, repaired and erected stone cairns along the desert route. But with the creation of the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve in 1994, the group's custodial role diminished.

Now Casebier has moved on to tending a historic schoolhouse museum in the Mojave Desert hamlet of Goffs and collecting oral histories from people who once lived in the East Mojave Desert. But he still sometimes checks the mailbox his group installed near Kelbaker Road, where people record their passage over the old road. Casebier estimates that several thousand make the trip annually.

One tends to think all deserts are the same, places that get only a scant amount of rain. But in North America there are four kinds: the Great Basin, Sonoran, Chihuahuan and relatively small Mojave, all in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.

Deer keep their distance at the Mid Hills Campground in the Mojave National Preserve. (Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Sailing the desert in an SUV

The Mojave National Preserve has some of the tallest sand dunes and thickest Joshua tree forests on the continent and, better still, a combination of elements — lava cones, dry lake beds, basin and range topography that make it a kind of desert primer.

If a desert has something to teach, I want to learn. Then too, I like tagging along with John on hiking and backcountry driving trips. He has the skills and gear, although when camping he would eat protein bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I didn't bring along some real food. For protection in the wilderness, he takes my grandfather's World War I saber, about as deadly as a papier-mâché prop in an operetta. He pores over maps before setting out and then basically ignores them in order, I think, to give expeditions a sense of discovery and adventure.

John told me this would be a very rough trip — two days of driving and one night of camping — and that I better not wimp out, the way I did a few years ago when I made him turn back on the appallingly rugged road that leads to the Maze District of Utah's Canyonlands National Park.

I rented a beige Ford Expedition with four-wheel drive and left a day ahead of John so I could see a few sights, including Kelso Depot. This desert oasis at Kelbaker and Kelso-Cima roads (two of the paved arteries that cross the preserve) was born with the completion of the railroad between Salt Lake City and L.A. in 1906, when there was considerable mining in the area.

But passenger trains began bypassing the little settlement after World War II. The handsome early '20s Spanish Revival train station, with its restaurant and regal stand of palm trees, was left to molder.

Now the National Park Service is in the final stages of renovating the building as an interpretive center and museum, scheduled to open this summer. It's a good rest stop between visits to the Cinder Cone Lava Beds about 15 miles north and Kelso Dunes to the south.

Then I headed up Kelso-Cima Road, which rounds the south side of gently sloping, astonishingly symmetrical Cima Dome, a 75-square-mile area of volcanic uplift in the wild heart of the preserve. The two-lane highway, often used as a shortcut between Palm Springs and Las Vegas, is straight and flat, paralleling railroad tracks before branching off across the Ivanpah Valley.

The sun was setting in a pink puddle by the time I reached Nipton, on the northeast side of the preserve, with its bushy tamarisks, pint-sized hotel and general store. I chatted with the clerk and drank a soda before heading for the Avi Resort & Casino, on the Colorado River about midway between Needles, Calif., and Laughlin, Nev.

I am not much of a gambler and had never been to the Needles-Laughlin area, where the tamed Colorado River is a bathtub favored by motor boaters and water skiers. But the eastern portal of the Old Mojave Road is near the Avi, which is owned by the Mojave Indians who settled the river's flood plain and helped blaze the trail that became the road.

They led Spanish explorer Father Francisco Garcés across the desert in 1776 and did the same for the American trapper Jedediah Strong Smith in 1826. But eventually, relations turned hostile between newly arriving white people and the Indians. As a result, in the 1860s the U.S. government built a chain of forts along the old desert trail, which by then had become a rump-blistering wagon road carrying supplies and mail.

I doubt the people at the Avi, propped at slot machines with plastic cups full of quarters, were thinking about history. Together with the casino's garish lights and the gorging at the Native Harvest Buffet, they vaguely depressed me, so I went to my room — big, clean, simply furnished, not bad for about $25 on a weeknight — and went to sleep, anticipating a rendezvous the next morning with John, who wasn't able to leave L.A. until after work.

I banged on his door at 9 a.m. and had a map spread out on a table in Avi's Feathers Café when he showed up for breakfast. Our plan was to drive half of the road that day, camp overnight and finish the next day, coming out at Afton Canyon just south of I-15 between Barstow and Baker. Then we would head back to the Avi, where we were leaving John's car, for a dip in the pool, another go at the buffet and beds with clean sheets.

But we were in no hurry, because two days of driving would easily get us over the road, with time to stop and explore such features as Soda Dry Lake on the west side of the preserve. After rainy weather, it becomes a vast, tire-swamping mud flat. When John saw the Expedition, he said it was probably too heavy to make it across the playa, but he cheered up when I told him it was insured for every conceivable mishap.

We packed the water, food and gear John had brought, spent a cool $50 filling the gas tank and set out. The unmarked turn-off west across the desert was about three miles north of the Avi; we found it with the help of Casebier's "Mojave Road Guide," annotated mile by mile. John made me manage the wheel at the beginning, to prove I could do it. Like most novice dirt-road drivers, I tended to take my foot off the gas when we came to sand. But my brother kept saying, "Follow the ruts. Keep going. Don't stop."

Then he cracked open a liter of Coke and yelled out the window, "No problem anyway! We're fully insured!"

That day was a pure desert joy from start to finish. The temperature was about 80 degrees when we left, and the sky was mounded with clouds. A lop-eared jackrabbit jumped out of a nest of creosote, birds tittered, the air smelled like a spice rack.

And, suddenly, everything sharpened up, as it will in the desert, from the yellow rabbitbrush to the brittle Piute Mountains, as if I'd just had Lasik surgery.

About 23 miles west of the Colorado River (using Casebier's distance calculations), we reached Ft. Piute, one of the military redoubts built on the road in the 1860s. It sits in the shadow of Jedediah Smith Butte, above dependable Piute Creek, and once harbored 18 enlisted men of Company D of the 9th U.S. Infantry.

John went looking for Native American petroglyphs in the creek bed while I ate a packaged cheese-and-cold-cut snack on the knee-high stone walls that are the remnants of the fort. Just before we relaunched our Old Mojave Road sortie, he did a saber dance in front of the Expedition with Grandpa's sword.

The setting sun colors the Marl Mountains in the central section of the Mojave National Preserve, about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles.(Robert Gauthier / LAT)

Mysterious turnoffs

With John driving, we climbed 3,412-foot Piute Pass, infamously rough in the old wagon road days. The view west swoops over the Lanfair Valley, where homesteaders tried to make the Mojave bloom in the early 20th century, to range upon range of desert mountains, separated by basins, in a Western geography lesson.

From there, we tooled across the valley, so thick with Joshua trees you would think they had been propagated. Here and there we saw old stuff scattered over the desert, including a wrecked school bus that made me think of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."

There were also mysterious turnoffs that John said could lead to crystal methamphetamine labs. He likes to put me on edge. When I asked if we needed gasoline, he routinely said we were about to run out.

We crossed paved Ivanpah Road at Casebier mile mark 41.7 and caught graded Cedar Canyon Road west to avoid a more treacherous stretch of the Old Mojave Road along Watson Wash. Eventually, we reached Government Holes, where one of the last gunfights in the West took place in 1925. It's a pretty place in the Round Valley, with a windmill and abandoned corral, and we considered making camp. But it was starting to get chilly and there were no windbreaks, so we turned south on Black Canyon Road, heading for Mid Hills Campground in aromatic forests of pinyon pine and juniper.

There we claimed site No. 25, with the preserve's best view of Cima Dome. A fire pit was stocked with wood, left by some friendly earlier camper, and there was a nice flat place for my tent. John set up his cot outside so he could see the stars. We had steak and apples for dinner, talked for a while and then went to sleep.

I slept like a sunken ship and awakened in time for sunrise over Cima Dome.

Another day in the desert ensued, not quite as good as the last. We lost our way, making an unintended detour north toward Death Valley Mine on a track that kept getting fainter and fainter. Finally, we reached the paved Kelso-Cima Road, where there's a little convenience store and post office run by tiny, wizened Irene Ausmus, who came to the Mojave with her husband in the 1960s and refused to sell out when the National Park Service arrived.

It wasn't hard to find the Old Mojave Road again, with Casebier's help. In fact, the road's rutted route can be seen for miles as it pushes west across Kelso Wash and rounds the Beale Mountains, named for explorer Edward F. Beale, who tried to introduce camels to the Mojave in 1857 but had to abandon the experiment because they frightened the horses.

The views north to Cima Dome and south to Kelso Dunes only got better. But just east of Marl Springs, John realized we had a flat, necessitating an hour of hot, dirty work mounting the humongous spare. There was some cursing, after which we decided to get to Kelbaker Road, about 20 miles west, as soon as possible, so we could drive to the town of Baker on I-15.

With the rigors of Soda Dry Lake ahead, it seemed prudent to get the blown tire fixed so we'd have a spare.

In Baker, we stopped at the Park Service information office, where a ranger gave us more bad news. Autumn rains had made passage over the playa dicey. Several vehicles had gotten stuck there recently, languishing for days awaiting rescue as the salt crust of the dry lake corroded their undercarriages.

John wanted to risk it, but the day was more than half gone. Over a lunch of hummus, fried calamari and gyros at the Mad Greek restaurant, I persuaded him to abort and head back to the Avi. So we can't say we drove the whole road. Our names don't appear in the record book at the Old Mojave Road mailbox, which we bypassed in our rush to Baker.

But John plans to return and conquer the playa. Maybe I'll go with him. I'm starting to understand why he loves the desert. Besides, I'd like to see him brandishing Grandpa's saber again.


Rocking and rolling across the Mojave

GETTING THERE:

Mojave National Preserve is about 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles. From L.A., take Interstate 15 northeast to Baker and turn south on Kelbaker Road, or take Interstate 40 east from Barstow and turn north on Kelbaker Road, to reach Kelso Depot, a major historical site in the preserve. The eastern portal of the Old Mojave Road is on Needles Highway about halfway between Needles, Calif., and Laughlin, Nev.

Spring and fall are the best seasons to drive the Old Mojave Road. Consult the Mojave National Preserve or "Mojave Road Guide," by Dennis G. Casebier (Tales of the Mojave Road Publishing Co., Essex, Calif.), for information on how to prepare for the trip.

WHERE TO STAY:

Two campgrounds in Mojave National Preserve, Mid Hills and Hole-in-the-Wall, have drinking water and toilet facilities. Sites are $12 per night. Roadside car camping is also permitted, with restrictions.

Avi Resort & Casino, P.O. Box 77011, 10000 Aha Macav Parkway, Laughlin, NV 89029; (800) 284-2946, http://www.avicasino.com/. This complex on the west bank of the Colorado River has rooms in a new tower or an older poolside building. Doubles start at $19 Sundays to Thursdays, $49 on weekends.

Hotel Nipton B&B, 107355 Nipton Road, HCR-1, Box 357, Nipton, CA 92364; (760) 856-2335, http://www.nipton.com/. This homey desert enclave is on the northeast side of the preserve. It has a general store and five guest rooms with shared baths. Doubles are $69.50, including breakfast.

WHERE TO EAT:

Laughlin and Needles have a range of casino and fast-food restaurants. But if you're driving through Baker on I-15, don't miss the Mad Greek, (760) 733-4354, for serendipitous gyros, souvlaki and fried calamari in the desert. Lunch for two about $20.

TO LEARN MORE:

Mojave National Preserve Headquarters, 222 E. Main St., Barstow, CA 92311; (760) 255-8801, http://www.nps.gov/moja, or the NPS Baker Information Center, 72157 Baker Blvd., Baker, CA 92309; (760) 733-4040.

Mojave Desert Heritage & Cultural Assn., Goff's Schoolhouse, 37198 Lanfair Road G-15, Essex, CA 92332; (760) 733-4482, http://www.mdhca.org/.