Mojave River flows through Barstow for first time since 2011

The Mojave River flows near the Deep Creek area during a winter storm last week. Inflow to the Mojave River at its headwaters peaked at approximately 15,000 cubic feet per second during the storm, according to provisional estimates. [James Quigg, Daily Press]

By Matthew Cabe
Victor Valley Press

BARSTOW — Recent rains allowed surface water in the Mojave River to flow through the city for the first time in eight years, signaling good news for recharge in regional aquifers, according to Mojave Water Agency officials.

MWA Senior Hydrogeologist/Engineer Tony Winkel told the Daily Press inflow to the Mojave River at its headwaters on Thursday peaked at approximately 15,000 cubic feet per second, according to provisional estimates.

That inflow surged through the inlet within the Mojave River Dam, sometimes called the Forks Dam, where the Deep Creek and West Fork tributaries converge.

Winkel said previous storms in recent weeks allowed the river to soak up water “like a big dry sponge.” Because the river can only absorb water so quickly, though, water from last week’s storm subsequently “skirted” along through Barstow, petering out just beyond Minneola Road in Yermo late last week.

“Minneola Road is kind of the upper end of the Baja subarea, but it was kind of a trickle,” Winkel said. “So right at the headwaters, it’s raging. You get down to the tail end of it, it’s just trickling because that much water has soaked in, which is a good thing because that’s water supply.”

Amid the worst drought in California history several years ago, the High Desert finally received some wet weather in 2017. But that water didn’t reach Barstow, which makes last week’s storm significant because it was the city’s “first influx of water since 2011,” Winkel said.

To understand just how much water flowed into the Mojave River on Thursday, MWA Water Conservation and Forecast Manager Nick Schneider said to imagine 15,000 basketballs bouncing through the inlet — in one second.

The analogy isn’t precise, according to Schneider and Winkel because a basketball isn’t exactly one cubic foot. Schneider, however, said the “industry conversion idea” is fair for visualization purposes.

“For the layman, if you think of a basketball, that’s a good way to process it,” Winkel said. “For an engineer, it drove me nuts.”

While 15,000 CFS is impressive and welcome, Winkel said last week’s storm, historically, pales in comparison to older weather events that brought significant inflow at the Mojave River’s headwaters.

On March 4, 1978, inflow peaked above 35,000 CFS, according to data Winkel provided. Some 40 years earlier, during what’s been called the “flood of the century” that ravaged the High Desert in March 1938, inflow peaked at nearly 75,000 CFS.

The data, which included estimates as far back as December 1859, showed at least 16 peak events with a magnitude above 25,000 CFS, including a Jan. 22, 1862, incident during which inflow is estimated at more than 100,000 CFS.

That peak came during the Great Flood of 1862, which started with a series of storms in December 1861 and is considered the largest flood in California’s history. It’s unknown how much damage occurred locally, but Sacramento was underwater for months. Schneider said newly elected Gov. Leland Stanford had to travel by rowboat to and from his inauguration in January.

Winkel said last week’s storm was nowhere near even the peaks seen in the wet winters of 2010 and 2011, which were also below 25,000 CFS. That said, it’s important in its own right because it equals recharge for the High Desert’s water supply, he said.

Consequential weather events occur, on average, every six to eight years, but that cycle isn’t consistent and the peaks are “very variable”, according to Winkel. Still, the High Desert, insofar as water supply is concerned, relies on peak events like the one experienced last week, he said.

“So how significant is it that the water made it to Barstow?” Winkel said. “Very. Because that’s the natural supply that we depend on.”

Specific recharge data for last week’s storm is not yet available because “we’re still in the storm swell,” according to Winkel, who said he’s hoping for more rain this year.

“Aside from the excitement factor of a river that’s actually flowing, which is very exciting because it usually doesn’t, I want to see more for water supply purposes.”

The Mojave River: A source of water battles and innovation

Postcard view of the old automobile bridge at the upper narrows of the Mojave River, circa 1930. The Mojave River flows above ground year-round through the narrows. The railroad follows the Mojave River through much of the High Desert. (From the collection of Mark Landis)

By Mark Landis
San Bernardino County Sun

Even in drought-stricken Southern California, the Mojave River could easily be described as one of the most unspectacular waterways in the Southwest. However, the historic significance of this strange desert paradox is hard to understate.

Through much of its 120-mile course, the Mojave River appears to be an irrelevant ribbon of sand. But in spite of its innocuous appearance, the river has provided the life blood for a broad stretch of the Mojave Desert since ancient times. It has also generated some of the West’s most ingenious water projects, and hard-fought legal battles.

The river flows above ground near its mountain sources, and through a few areas like the Mojave Narrows, and Afton Canyon, where the bedrock forces the water to the surface.

Indians were able to survive in the desert along the river where it flows above ground year-round, and provides an oasis of shade and food sources.

Early explorers and settlers counted on the river’s sections of dependable above-ground flow to get them across long, barren stretches of desert. The Mojave Road, The Mormon Trail, and The Old Spanish Trail, were the primary Indian and migrant trails into Southern California. These crucial routes all followed sections of the Mojave River through some of the driest stretches of the desert.

The Mojave River begins in the northern slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains, and flows northward under a dry bed of sand for much of its course. The east and west forks of the river merge just upstream of the present-day Mojave River Dam, in southeast Hesperia.

The eastern fork is known as Deep Creek, and its watershed begins in the mountains around and to the east of Lake Arrowhead. The watershed for the West Fork of the Mojave River begins in the mountains above, and to the west of Silverwood Lake. The river ends in Soda and Silver Dry Lakes, near the community of Baker.

One of the earliest settlers on the Mojave River was Captain Aaron Lane, a rancher who operated a trading post on the river. In 1858, Lane acquired a prime piece of Mojave River land near the present-day Turner Ranch, in Victorville and started a successful farm and cattle ranch.

Word of the successful agriculture effort on the Mojave River spread quickly, and sections of the river with regular flow, blossomed into a lush ribbon of farms and ranches.

A long-awaited railroad from San Bernardino, through the Cajon Pass, to Barstow was completed in 1885. Fred Perris of the California Southern Railroad chose a route through the High Desert that closely followed the grade of the Mojave River.

With a new railroad and a water source, land agents quickly began to promote the high desert as a prime region for new settlements. Beginning in the late 1800s, the High Desert communities of Hesperia, Apple Valley, Victorville, Oro Grande, Barstow, and Daggett, sprang up along the banks of the Mojave River.

In 1887, Judge Robert M. Widney and a group of investors incorporated the Hesperia Land and Water Company. The company purchased 35,000 acres on the high desert mesa that would later become the town of Hesperia. The company also began filing claims on water from the east fork of the Mojave River (Deep Creek), to irrigate the new colony.

The key to the success of the Hesperia Colony was an irrigation project to bring water from Deep Creek. Touted as a “marvel of engineering skill,” the project known as the “Hesperia Ditch” included a water channel blasted through solid rock, a ditch, and piping, that brought the water to a reservoir near the present-day Lime Street Park.

Challenges to Widney’s water rights began even before a spade was turned to dig the Hesperia Ditch. Land owners downstream in Victor and Oro Grande voiced loud opposition to the taking of their water, but Widney continued, and completed the canal in 1888.

A new high desert colony named Minneola was laid out in 1893, about 7 miles east of Daggett. A subsurface dam was built to divert the underground flow of the Mojave River into the “Mineola Ditch,” and an 11-mile irrigation channel was constructed to bring water to the townsite. The big dreams soon went bust, and in spite of the canal, the desert metropolis never materialized.

The largest single water project on the Mojave River was conceived in 1889, by Adolph Koebig, a San Bernardino city engineer. Koebig proposed a project to dam the upper portion of Deep Creek, and divert the Mojave River water south, into the San Bernardino Valley for irrigation.

The huge irrigation project to create the Little Bear Reservoir (later renamed Lake Arrowhead) began construction despite harsh objections and legal challenges from the downstream Mojave River water users. By the time the dam was finally completed in 1922, the Mojave River water users had successfully used the courts to block diversion of the water to San Bernardino.

The Little Bear Reservoir project was re-purposed from an irrigation project, to a recreational lake, and the precious Deep Creek water continues to flow into the Mojave River today.

By the early 1960s, population growth in the High Desert communities began to seriously overdraft the Mojave River Basin. Plans were made to bring State Water Project water into the Mojave River Basin, but delivery didn’t begin until 1991.

The State Water Project now supplies water from Northern California to recharge stations located along the Mojave River that stretch from Hesperia to Daggett. The recharge water percolates into the soil, where it is stored in the groundwater basins, and then pumped out for use by local water agencies.

Today, just as in the pioneer days, innovative irrigation projects continue to make the Mojave River the lifeblood of the high desert communities.

County unveils new Route 66 historical markers

Route 66 Ambassador Terry Kafides, foreground applauds as 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt unveils new San Bernardino County Route 66 signs along National Trails Highway. The county has the longest continuous paved stretch of the original highway in the country, and is beginning a project to post it with county highway signs. (JAMES QUIGG, DAILY PRESS)

Staff Reports
Victor Valley Daily Press

ORO GRANDE • In an effort to draw attention to the High Desert’s claim to the legendary Route 66, San Bernardino County is moving forward with a new historical sign marker program.

Friday marked the 85th anniversary of the storied thoroughfare, and 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt used the occasion to unveil the first sign marker at a dedication ceremony on National Trails Highway in Oro Grande, just north of the Mojave River Bridge.

“Marking County Route 66 is one of several steps I am planning to celebrate, promote and protect this road and to make county highways more user-friendly,” Mitzelfelt said in a statement.

More than 250 miles of the iconic highway runs the length of San Bernardino County from Needles through Upland. More signs will be placed at various intervals along the route, starting with heading north of Oro Grande onto Main Street in Barstow. The sign program will then head east on Interstate 40, north on Nebo Street near Barstow, east on National Trails Highway and north on Goffs Road to its junction with Highway 95.

Cultural and historic sites along this alignment include the City of Barstow and the communities of Daggett, Newberry Springs, Ludlow, Amboy, Cadiz, Chambless, Essex and Goffs, as well as the Mojave National Preserve. This alignment can be expanded to include additional portions of or the entire Route 66 at a later date. The remainder of the signs on this first leg will be installed by the end of December.

Mitzelfelt is contributing $45,000 for the program through some of the last of his office’s discretionary funds, with that pot of money no longer unavailable to supervisors. Mitzelfelt said he initiated the marker program after seeing its effectiveness in other counties.

The county’s Route Marker Program is the first to be added in the state since 1983, according to Mitzelfelt’s office. The California County Route Marker Program was established in 1958 to mark county routes of major importance and public interest that are constructed and marked to sufficient safety standards. San Bernardino County is the 43rd of California’s 58 counties to participate in the program.

The Old Spanish Trail, Explained

New Mexico to Southern California

Old Spanish Trail (in red). (National Park Service)

by Nathan Masters
KCET

Although Southern California today is a region teeming with millions, for much of its history it was a remote outpost of the vast Spanish Empire. Nearly 227 years passed between Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo's first exploration of the California coast in 1542 and Gaspar de Portolá's establishment of the Presidio of San Diego in 1769. Then, for another sixty years, Southern California grew in relative isolation from the rest of Hispanic civilization. Finally, in 1829, an intrepid merchant opened a trade route—today known as the Old Spanish Trail—between Los Angeles and Santa Fe, creating Southern California's first overland link with the older Spanish settlements of New Mexico.

From June 2-5, historians, archivists, and representatives from government agencies and the Hispanic and Native American communities will gather in Pomona at the 2011 Old Spanish Trail Association annual conference to explore the history of the trail in California.

In the late nineteenth century, hundreds of miles of unforgiving terrain and harsh climate divided Southern California from New Mexico, but both stood to profit from a direct trade route. Alta California then formed, along with the province of New Mexico, the northern boundary of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The recently-colonized Spanish territory boasted fine natural harbors in San Francisco and San Diego. But with its location at the northern extreme of the Spanish Empire, and surrounded by inhospitable desert to the east and southeast, Southern California was effectively isolated from the political and cultural center of Mexico City to the south.

To the east, the older Spanish province of New Mexico, first settled in 1598, offered California integration with the burgeoning United States and the Mexican heartland via established overland trade routes. For Southern California's rancheros, New Mexico also represented an untapped market for the region's abundant supply of horses and mules. From the point of view of landlocked New Mexico, a trade route to Southern California represented not only a potential market for Santa Fe's serapes and other handmade goods, but also a connection to foreign markets via California's ports.

Almost as soon as the first Spanish settlements arose in California, efforts were made to bridge the chasm and link the two provinces. A team of Franciscan missionaries left Santa Fe for California in 1776, but made it only as far as Utah Lake, near the present-day city of Provo.

In 1826, American fur trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith blazed a trail from present-day Utah to the Mojave Desert. After a clash with hostile Mohave Indians, Smith met two Tongva guides who offered to take his expedition to Mission San Gabriel, near Los Angeles. The guides led Smith along the intermittent Mohave River and over the San Bernardino Mountains near the Cajon Pass. Smith's party arrived at the mission on November 27, where they were warmly received by the missionaries, as depicted in the scene below.

Three years later, Santa Fe merchant Antonio Armijo led the first successful caravan from Santa Fe to Southern California, combining Smith's route with portions of the Franciscans' 1776 path to Utah to open what would later be called the Old Spanish Trail. In doing so, Armijo had established an important link between California and New Mexico, now the northern flanks of the newly-independent Mexican Republic.

Elizabeth von Till Warren, a historian of the Old Spanish Trail, writes of the new route's effect:

News of the opening of trade with California resulted in immediate commerce between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. With a few exceptions, pack trains made annual treks between New Mexico and California, bringing woven Mexican products to California, which lacked sheep, and bartering them for horses and mules, scarce in New Mexico.

The trail carried mule-trains over the Cajon Pass, then west through Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, and El Monte, to the region's major settlements at Mission San Gabriel and Los Angeles. There the traders unloaded their goods, many of which were sold at the Los Angeles Plaza.

The increased commerce hid a dark and ugly side to the trail's establishment, according to von Till Warren:

Raids for Indian slaves became common, with victims sold at either end of the trail despite official condemnation of the practice. The traffic in human beings reverberated among the peoples who lived along the trail for many years longer than the caravans plied their trade.

The trail remained an important trade route for several years until, shortly after the American conquest of California, several competing routes comprised of wagon roads were opened. The Old Spanish Trail, which allowed only for pack animals, soon fell into disuse.

Today, monuments mark the trail's path through the Southland. In Upland, the Madonna of the Trail statue overlooks the route once taken by Santa Fe-bound traders. The monument, dedicated by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1929, was one of twelve placed along the National Old Trails Road, which stretched from New York City to Los Angeles. In the Cajon Pass, an obelisk-shaped monument, dedicated in 1917, commemorates the early pioneers who traveled between Southern California and points east.

The trail's historical significance was further recognized in 2002, when an act of Congress, passed unanimously by both houses and signed by President George W. Bush, designated the corridor as the Old Spanish National Historic Trail and placed the historic route under the supervision of the National Park Service.

Explorers blazed trails in early Inland Empire

Mark Landis, Correspondent
The San Bernardino Sun

John Charles Frémont, The Pathfinder. (Public Domain)

Beginning in the late 1700s, a succession of legendary explorers and missionaries started to traverse San Bernardino County to map out new overland routes, carry out military missions, and convert the local American Indians to Christianity.

In 1772, Pedro Fages, a Spanish soldier, became the first white explorer to pass through the San Bernardino Valley and cross into the Mojave Desert. For the next 50 years, explorers traveling through the region didn't show an interest in the San Bernardino Valley and their passages through the area was incidental.

The date and leader of the first exploration of the San Bernardino Valley for the purpose of establishing a settlement here has been the subject of controversy for many years. Now, with the upcoming San Bernardino bicentennial celebration, the debate among local historians has been rekindled.

According to a popular history book written by Father Juan Caballeria in 1902, Father Francisco Dumetz, an elderly priest from the San Gabriel Mission, led an expedition in 1810 to the San Bernardino Valley. Caballeria claimed that Dumetz had been sent to search for a good location to establish an inland mission outpost.

According to Caballeria, Dumetz found the area around the Indian village at Guachama to be an ideal location. Guachama was located near the present-day intersection of Hunts Lane and Hospitality Lane in San Bernardino, along the Santa Ana River.

Caballeria cites May 20, 1810, as the date Dumetz set up a crude capilla or chapel at Guachama and bestowed the name San Bernardino upon the site. The name honored St. Bernardino of Sienna, whose Feast Day was on that day. He was an Italian priest, Franciscan missionary and Catholic saint who lived from 1380 to 1444.

In the years following the publication of Caballeria's book, 1810 became the accepted date that the valley was first explored and named. But research by later historians raised questions and doubts.

Prominent San Bernardino Valley historians George and Helen Beattie noted that major American Indian attacks against the San Gabriel Mission in 1810 nearly led to the overthrow of that mission.

Documentation from the 1810 period shows that the Indian unrest halted the establishment of new mission sites beyond the military protection of the San Gabriel Mission.

One possibility is that Dumetz did visit the San Bernardino Valley in search of a good mission site in 1810, but due to the American Indian unrest, nothing was permanently established until several years later. It is well documented that the San Gabriel Mission established "Rancho San Bernardino" in the valley in 1819.

Unless new evidence is discovered, the full story of the valley's first exploration will remain a mystery.

The first American explorer to pass through San Bernardino County was legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith, in November of 1826. The Smith party had traveled south from the Salt Lake Valley and begun crossing the Mojave Desert when they veered west from the Colorado River.

Guided by two Indians who had run away from the San Gabriel Mission, Smith followed the old Mojave Trail that padre Garces used more than 50 years before.

On the last stage of his long overland journey to the Pacific, Smith described the Mojave Desert as a country of "complete barrens." The party traveled from morning until night from water hole to water hole. When Jedediah reached the Mojave River, he called it "The Inconstant River" since it ran both below and above the surface.

Smith followed the Mojave River to its source in the San Bernardino Mountains and then crossed into the San Bernardino Valley on Nov. 26, over the old Mojave Trail, near the Cajon Pass.

Upon reaching the San Bernardino Valley, the exhausted band of explorers turned west and traveled to the San Gabriel Mission where they were welcomed by the padres. Described as being "nearly naked," the tattered Smith party was clothed and treated to a great feast of beef and cornmeal.

Smith and his men were detained by the Spanish authorities who were suspicious of American intrusion into their territory. Smith finally convinced the authorities of his altruistic motives, and the party began moving again on Jan. 18, 1827.

Jedediah Smith made another trip into Southern California in 1827. On this trip, the party was attacked by American Indians along the Colorado River, and more than half of the men were killed.

The seven survivors came back to the San Bernardino Valley to get help for a wounded man and collect supplies. This time, Smith thought better of going to the San Gabriel Mission and departed by the same route across the desert.

Famed explorer John C. Fremont crossed through the Mojave Desert and San Bernardino County on his second great expedition in 1844. The Fremont party included renowned frontiersmen Kit Carson and Alexis Godey.

The weary explorers were on the return trip from their expedition through Washington and Oregon. They had come south through the San Joaquin Valley, crossed the Tehachapi Mountains and were headed east through the Antelope Valley, in search of the Mojave Trail (which was now being called the Spanish Trail, and portions of which later would be called the Mormon Trail).

On April 19, Fremont was greatly relieved to find the trail near present-day Oro Grande, northwest of Victorville. The trail followed the life-giving Mojave River that provided just enough sustenance for the men and animals to cross this particularly harsh section of desert.

Along the way, the Fremont party had a bloody skirmish with local American Indians near Bitter Springs (within the boundaries of present-day Fort Irwin). The American Indians had stolen a herd of horses, and Kit Carson and Alexis Godey led a vicious foray to retrieve the animals.

Fremont left Southern California over the Mojave Trail and returned to Kansas City via Salt Lake Valley and Pueblo Colorado.

Many of the routes used by San Bernardino County's earliest explorers have evolved into major roads and highways and countless names they gave the sites along the way are still in use today. Their trailblazing expeditions eventually opened the way for the great wave of immigrants who settled Southern California.

County funds repairs for ‘railroad bridge’

Residents still waiting on Rock Springs Road motorist bridge


RYAN ORR
Daily Press




Vehicles travel on Rock Springs Road next to the railroad bridge over the Mojave River. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved $100,000 to repair the railroad bridge. Reneh Agha / Staff Photographer

VICTORVILLE — With no word on a Rock Springs Road “bridge” to bypass the Mojave River during flood season, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved $100,000 to repair the railroad bridge just north of the road.

For years Rock Springs Road — connecting unincorporated Apple Valley to Hesperia — was washed out during heavy rains, cutting off at least 11,000 motorists who use the road daily.

In 2005, the county constructed a new reinforced concrete culvert underneath Rock Springs Road, which diverted some of the river’s flow toward the railroad bridge, causing damage, said David Zook, spokesman for San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt.

The affected portion of the railroad structure now must be reconstructed by using deeply driven steel piles to replace the original timber piles, according to the Board of Supervisors’ agenda.

The county will contribute $100,000 from the County Road Funds budget to the railway project. In return, BNSF will design and construct the project and release the county from liability for any further damages to the affected portion of the railroad bridge.

“A request for funding to construct the (motorist) bridge for Rock Springs Road has been a part of our federal legislative platform for several years,” Zook said.

As recently as January, Rock Springs Road was closed for more than a day due to flooding. However, since the construction of the new culvert the road hasn’t been “washed out” and reopens as soon as water recedes, Zook said.

The San Bernardino County Public Works Department estimates that the road has been closed five times since 2005 as a result of flooding.

The 2005 project was built with $1.1 million in federal funds awarded in response to the flooding, and the county was prohibited from using it for any reason other than simply repairing the road, Zook said.

In a previous interview Mitzelfelt said he has been wanting to build a bridge over the river on Rock Springs Road since he was appointed, but the cost is too high.

Original estimates to build a permanent bridge when it was washed out in 2004 came in at $15 million.

Zook said the county has requested a $2 million earmark from its congressional delegation to get the project started and estimates the entire project will cost $20 million.

“However, the appropriations have not been made yet and we don’t expect Congress to complete that process until after the presidential election,” Zook said.

Moon Over Mojave

DESERT RATTLER



by Ken Layne
LA City Beat



White Trash Stonehenge.
Ken Layne.


Go north up the old Route 66 out of Victorville, past the biker saloon (FOR LEASE) and abandoned Old West antiques shops and the monstrous limestone-cement factory on the dry Mojave River, the chalky beige bluffs to your left, lush green cottonwood and alien tamarisk trees on the river bed, and you’re finally out of the Southland sprawl.

The river is underground, at this point, flowing under the alluvial sands, feeding the trees and reeds and just barely supporting the handful of houses and farms along its banks. Next to the junkyards and crumbling mobile homes, some unlucky speculators have built Custom Homes on highway-frontage lots. Brand new houses with the standard granite counters and stainless steel appliances and Pergo flooring, never lived in, just sitting here 50 feet off a forgotten highway that used to define America.

Seven months ago, when snow still covered the San Gabriels and Barstow still froze at night, I looked up and down this secret river for a decent place to call home. Nobody seemed to know the housing market had collapsed after a few wild years. Nothing was for rent, everything was priced for a boom that had long passed and was never real anyway. I chased weird leads: a century-old adobe on an alfalfa farm, mystery houses inside Mojave National Preserve that only existed on computer maps.

Kids and dog in the car, I finally investigate “Silver Lakes.” Here, alongside a thirsty little river that rarely appears above the desert sands, some jackass genius carved a pair of evaporation ponds, built a collection of comical boat slips around the fake shore, and lined it all with “lake view” residential lots. About a third of the houses are vacant, For Sale signs everywhere. The cracked-stucco strip mall restaurant lunch is inedible. A dreary windowless liquor store is doing good midday business. At the otherwise empty real-estate office, a woman with a bleach-blonde Mojave beehive hands over a single-spaced full-page list of houses for rent.

It’s an asphalt maze of terrible architecture – everything from faded 1970s ranch boxes to orange 1990s two-story “Moroccan” monstrosities hanging over the lot edges. I get lost in dead-end loops of vacant lots and desolate playgrounds of sun-blasted plastic. It’s a gloomy Philip K. Dick colony on Mars, a shoddily constructed replica of an American suburb back on Earth.

I drive out of Silver Lakes and shudder. That night, two local kids are murdered, “execution style,” at an abandoned World War II bunker up a dirt road from the weird suburb. The story will play out in the Victor Valley newspaper over many, many months:

Bodhisattva “Bodhi” Sherzer-Potter, a 16-year-old honor student who lived in Silver Lakes, and her 18-year-old boyfriend Cody Thompson, of nearby Apple Valley, were hanging out with other kids at the trash-strewn bunker, celebrating somebody’s birthday. Bodhi and Cody were the last kids left when two psychopaths from “down the hill” showed up, dragged the doomed lovers into the bunker, and shot them dead.

As usual, the killers had MySpace pages with the requisite self-portraits brandishing their guns, and within a few weeks they were both behind bars. A third kid was arrested as an “accessory.” A San Bernardino sheriff’s deputy had stopped by the party spot before the murders, and left the teenagers drinking in a desolate Air Force bunker because “none appeared intoxicated and no trespassing complaints had been filed against them.”

The bunker was built for Hawes Auxiliary Field, a World War II air station and an environmental catastrophe thanks to its deteriorated fuel tanks poisoning the groundwater. A mile south of Highway 58 on a gently rising sage bush slope, the bunker loomed like a white-trash Stonehenge.

After the murders, the parents in Silver Lakes protested until the Pentagon agreed to tear down the bunker. But it’s endangered desert tortoise habitat, so fencing would have to go up, to prevent any tortoises from wandering into the demolition zone – a demolition that would be performed without explosives so as not to bother the tortoises. A wildlife biologist would be on the scene until the job was complete.

Late July on a 105-degree afternoon, I drive up the dirt road from Silver Lakes, discovering a Lockheed stealth test site along the way, its distant runway and giant hangars and weird pylons protected by chain-link and dozens of menacing NO TRESPASSING signs. Just before the 58, a pile of old tires points the way to the party bunker. I follow the jeep trail to another pile of tires marking the entrance. But the bunker is gone, wiped off the desert floor. There’s a wide circle of bulldozed and smoothed-over sand, patches of beer bottle shards glimmering in the white sun, pink shotgun shells pressed into the dirt here and there. No fence, no memorial, nothing to mark the scene beyond the pitted concrete rectangles set in the desert at 60-degree angles, in a loose circle around the half-mile site. I walk across the scraped desert site, wondering where, exactly, the two kids were murdered, for no reason at all, in a cold concrete pit somewhere beneath this ground.

The Air Force wants to renovate this old Army Air Field, for the new generation of robot war planes, those high-altitude drones often mistaken for alien spacecraft over the Mojave and, these days, over Iran.

Technicality may cut California desert areas from federally protected status

The proposed National Landscape Conservation Act would unify management and funding of designated areas. But it requires 'national' in the area name, excluding some of the state's sensitive areas.

By Janet Wilson, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

Congress is considering permanent protection for 26 million acres of beautiful and historic landscapes in the American West, but has quietly excluded millions of acres of California desert.

In a system that would rival the national parks and forests, the National Landscape Conservation Act would unify the management and funding for areas such as the original Pony Express National Historic Trail, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, a million acres of Alaskan caribou calving grounds, 38 wild rivers, Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and a tiny ghost town near the Mexican border.

But more than half of the 10.6 million-acre California Desert Conservation Area, which stretches from the Mexican border to Mono Lake, has been dropped on technical grounds. Because the word "national" isn't in its title, the conservation area doesn't qualify, according to U.S. Bureau of Land Management attorneys.

Environmental watchdogs and some land bureau employees say the California area, created by Congress in 1976, is the cornerstone of the fledgling national system. They say the semantics hide political motives: Utility companies have proposed hundreds of miles of electrical transmission corridors through California's deserts, and off-road vehicle enthusiasts oppose further regulation of the area.

"I don't think this is a technicality at all . . . That's a huge hit to desert conservation in California and the Southwest," said Daniel Patterson, director of the southwest office of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents whistle-blowers in government agencies.

The bill does include the King Range National Conservation Area, the Headwaters Forest Reserve, the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, and just under half -- 3.7 million acres -- of the desert conservation area. Not included are more than 6 million acres of desert. Some of the land has been used for mining and off-roading, but much of it remains pristine, wide-open space.

Patterson said that if the bureau's entire California desert system isn't part of the national system, its conservation designation "would be a protection in name only . . . The California BLM will lose funding, they will lose staff, they'll lose what conservation focus they might have."

Afton Canyon
He said the excluded desert lands, including visually stunning and ecologically important areas such as Afton Canyon and Big Morongo Preserve, would be more at risk from proposed transmission-line corridors, among other projects. In addition, he said, "it could be expanded to off-roading, it could be expanded to mining, it could be expanded to land sales for Southern California urban housing sprawl. It's just a loss."

Others were relieved that major portions of the desert would not come under tighter rules.

"I'm worried about the people who own private land (inside the conservation area), the off-highway users, the ranchers, the miners, the loggers . . . the recreation access to people who just like to go collect rocks," said Chuck Cushman, head of the American Land Rights Assn. "When you put an overlay of national park-like regulations over these lands, you just cut off Americans from those lands."

Although staff members for U.S. Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) say she is reluctant to amend the House bill to include the California land, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she will push to fix the 7-milllion-acre "glitch" in the Senate version.

In many cases, bureau land is open to multiple uses, including mining, grazing and off-road driving. There are no guided tours and few rangers. Officials said that management approach would remain on the national landscape lands.

"There is hunting. There will be no hotels. You can camp pretty much anywhere you want," said Elena Daly, head of the bureau's program that could win permanent protection from Congress.

She said the program also stresses collaboration with local communities, including "sustainable ranching."

Daniel Pfiefer of Costa Mesa is torn by the proposed legislation. Pfiefer, who had just finished a three-day off-road trip along the ancient Mojave trail this week, said he appreciates the difference between national park and land bureau conservation lands. "We came through some national parks areas. You cannot get off any road at all. You can't even have a ground fire in national parks . . . But the BLM areas are very friendly. They don't want you driving out all over the place, it's a 'tread softly' kind of thing. I'm very happy with the way it is right now."

Although he hates the way rogue off-roaders "trash" pristine areas by cutting illegal paths and dumping garbage, the bill proposed by Congress, he said, makes him nervous.

"As a person that absolutely hates rules and regulations myself, I have such a difficult time with it, because I do so much love the outdoors, and I do so much love going out and Jeeping across the trails.

Mojave River crossing in Afton Canyon
"Being an off-roading enthusiast, it scares me to think that if the federal government starts putting their fingers into it, and start sectioning off any portions of the desert, then closing it off is not far behind."

The National Landscape Conservation System was created in 2000 by outgoing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to pull together and protect hundreds of conservation areas, monuments, wilderness study areas and other "orphans" of the federal bureau. All of the bureau's California desert lands were included. Unlike the proposed law, Babbit's executive order can be rescinded by the current or future Interior secretary.

"A constant threat is that it could be dissolved and dismantled at any point in time, with the many properties truly becoming 'orphans,' " Ian Wilson, spokesman for the nonprofit Sonoran Institute, a Tucson-based environmental policy group, said about California's desert area.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne supports the bill as written. A broad coalition of more than 70 outdoor sports, environmental, historical preservation and religious groups is pushing for passage of the legislation, which would also establish a line item in the federal budget for annual funding. Currently the program receives $50 million a year.

"I think we are all about to witness the next major conservation system for the United States," said Daly on a recent tour of several program sites, including the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area grasslands that stretch for 48,000 acres outside of Tucson.

It is hard to see the difference on the ground between some of the included and excluded areas. The Las Cienegas area is named for the Hundred Waters creek that flows across the Sonoran desert floor between mountain ranges in the Sky Island region, its willow and cottonwood-lined banks providing shade and forage for 230 bird species. "Oklahoma" and "Red River" were filmed on the sweeping grasslands decades ago, and ranchers and land bureau managers have laboriously ripped out invasive mesquite that is overtaking the grasses.

Five hundred miles to the west, the Mojave River bubbles up out of the parched desert in Afton Canyon, nourishing more than 180 bird species. Hundreds of films, including "Letters From Iwo Jima," and "Kill Bill" were filmed in the desert area.

Daly says it's not her job to tell Congress whether some or all of California's deserts should be included. But she said it's not too late for the omitted lands to be added, if that's what Congress wants.

"The bill is in draft form," she said. "It's not a done deal."

Mojave River Flooding closes Rock Springs Road

2,400 gallons of water per second being released


RYAN ORR Staff Writer
Victor Valley Daily Press


Rock Springs Road has been over taken by Mojave River flood waters.
Reneh Agha / Staff Photographer

ROCK SPRINGS — Rock Springs Road has been over taken by Mojave River flood waters and now looks more like a lake, cutting off at least 11,000 vehicles per day who use it.

Due to the recent heavy rains more than 366,000 gallons of water per minute is being released into the Mojave River, which has caused the closing of Rock Springs Road.

The low-lying road which connects Apple Valley to Hesperia is often flooded out during heavy rains.

The recent storms caused the California Department of Water Resources to release water from Silverwood Lake.

“Cedar Springs Dam is not a flood control dam so any natural resources that come in, we have to let out,” said John Bunce, operations superintendent for the department.

Starting Sunday, the department began releasing 320 cubic feet of water from the dam per second, or 2,400 gallons.

By Sunday night it was up to 4,500 gallons per second being released, said David Zook, spokesman for San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt.

Monday morning they increased the flow again up to 815 cubic feet per second, or 61,000 gallons, Zook added. It will continue at that rate indefinitely he said.

The Cedar Springs Dam holds water in Silverwood Lake. The lake is a state water project retaining water from the California Aqueduct.

“That water belongs to us, not the state water project,” Zook said of the natural rainfall.

The Mojave Forks Dam, located further down river from Silverwood lake but still before Rock Springs Road was reportedly releasing 5,700 cubic feet of water per second Sunday or 42,750 gallons of water.

The National Weather Service released a flood warning Sunday saying significant water was expected to be released into the Mojave River.

As a result of the alert, Mitzelfelt initiated the telephone emergency notification system to alert residents in the area of the possible flood dangers.

Zook said about 3,000 residents were notified.

Monday afternoon, eight inches of water was still flowing over Rock Springs Road, Zook said.

Zook said public works officials didn’t expect the road to be badly damaged from the flooding.

According to the San Bernardino County Department of Public Works, no other roads down stream required closure, due to the water being released.

Mitzelfelt said he has been wanting to build a bridge over the river on Rock Springs Road since he was appointed but the cost is too high.

Original estimates to build a permanent bridge when it was washed out in 2004 came in at $15 million.

Local fish species on the rebound

Bob Hilburn, a Bureau of Land Management volunteer site steward and educator, checks the water temperature of an aquarium full of Mohave tui chub on Saturday. Photo by David Heldreth

By David Heldreth, staff writer
Desert Dispatch

BARSTOW — The Mohave tui chub is just looking for a home.

The Mohave tui chub is the only fish that is native to the Mojave River system, but it can’t be found there anymore. They were even one of the first animals protected when the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973.

However, you can get a glimpse of the rare fish at the Desert Discovery Center on Barstow Road. While there you might even catch Bob Hilburn, a volunteer site steward and educator for the Bureau of Land Management, during a feeding.

“We have three aquariums at the Discovery Center,” Hilburn said. “Two have the Mohave tui chub and one has the Arroyo. I just do what the scientists tell me to, feed them and take the water temperature.”

The Mohave tui chub lost their original home to predators, competition with introduced fish species and possibly hybridization according to Debra Hughson a science advisor for the Mojave National Preserve. Hughson and a group of scientists are working on a new study at the DDC. The goal of the study is to create a stable Mohave tui chub population and determine if they could hybridize. The study has several steps and could take more than seven years.

“We’re in the first stages now,” Hughson said. “We need to see if the Mohave can create hybrids, and if they do are the hybrids viable. They could be sterile like other hybrids such as a mule. If so it would be easier to reintroduce the Mohave.”

The Mohave tui chub were thought to have bred with the Arroyo Chub, an introduced species, and no longer exist in a pure form. However, a little luck and the development of the field of genetics have proven that to be untrue. A small population of fish were discovered by Curtis Springer, the founder of the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa, in the nearby waters in the 1940s. Springer then introduced some of those fish into his manmade Lake Tuendae at Zzyzx. Sixty years later genetic testing proved that the fish Springer found were pure Mohave tui chub.

It is believed that one of the times the Mojave River flooded a group of Mohave tui chub were carried into the Zzyzx area, and were stranded there as the waters receded creating the refuge. All Mohave tui chub in existence today are descendants of the fish Springer found.

“It is pure chance that Springer took care of the Mohave,” Hughson said. “The introduction of the Arroyo chub pushed them out of the river. Curtis Springer saved them from complete extinction without knowing what he was doing.”

The study being done at the DDC is also part of the first step toward down listing the Mohave tui chub from endangered to threatened. A species needs to have at least six stable populations for five years before it can be down listed. There are currently three populations in existence with one at Zzyzx, one at Fort Cady and one at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. Hughson said as the study at the DDC expands it should produce enough Mohave tui chub to be considered a population and only two more would be needed.

Having the study at the DDC also allows for the public to get to know the Mohave tui chub better. Hilburn has been part of that effort. Hilburn said the DDC has been working on a curriculum to teach elementary kids about the fish to try and instill the importance of preservation.

The Desert Discovery Center is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Native fish returns to Victor Valley

Mohave tui chub will return to the Mojave River


The Mohave Tui Chub, is the area’s only native fish, and endangered.

by Hillary Borrud
Victorville Daily Press

APPLE VALLEY — A small, endangered fish that has disappeared from the Mojave River seven decades ago will return to the carea this fall in a refuge to be constructed at the Lewis Center.

The day when the Mohave tui chub, which disappeared because of predators and hybridization, might return to the actual river remains unknown.

The new refuge is the product of several years of work by students and a teacher at the Lewis Center. Employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game praised the center for bringing the project to fruition.

Mohave tui chub are humble looking fish, but they can grow to a foot long and live up to 36 years, said Steve Parmenter, a senior fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

A recovery plan written in accordance with the Endangered Species Act calls for six refuges to be created before the Mohave tui chub can be downlisted from endangered to threatened, said Judy Hohman, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife office in Ventura.

“That will get us closer to our goal of downlisting the chub,” she said.

The three existing refuges are at China Lake, Camp Cady and Lake Tuendae in the Mojave National Preserve.

The fish cannot be removed from the endangered species list until it is returned to the river, a proposition that is unlikely to happen anytime soon because of the many non-native predators still in the waters of the Mojave River, said Parmenter.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is contributing $25,000 from its budget to the Lewis Center refuge, Hohman said.

Students and teachers at the Lewis Center will be contributing elbow grease and working to get the community involved, said Matthew Huffine, the middle and high school science coordinator at the Lewis Center.

“Efforts like these only really take off when the community gets involved,” said Huffine, who needs help with fencing, grading and signage.

The Lewis Center has a small pond where the fish will be released this fall, until the larger pond can be built.

Students at the Lewis Center will be involved with experiments related to Mohave tui chub recovery and water quality. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generally does not manage land, so finding areas 'for refuges can be difficult, Hohman said.

“We continue to look for more sites where we could put this fish,” Hohman said. “We would like to downlist it and eventually take it off the list.”