Greetings from Camp Cady, California! Armistice Day (later to be named Veterans Day) is still about 60 years away, but here we are, taking you back in time to the loneliest, meanest U.S. Army outpost in the United States, a year before the Civil War went hot. It is a day in 1860, and we’re…
The Mojave Desert has always been a place where ideas arrive quietly. They drift in like a shimmering mirage, settle into the sand, and wait for someone stubborn enough, or visionary enough, to pick them up. In Newberry Springs, one such idea took root four years ago: revive a forgotten stretch of Route 66, restore its…
Update 12/08/21: Efforts to build a new community park at Historic Gilman Ranch in Banning will move forward after it received a grant from State Parks for more than $6 million for Stagecoach Stop Park. James Marshall Gilman was born in Meredith, New Hampshire, on June 9, 1842. As a young man, his parents sent…
The next time you ask someone what rock they crawled out from under, consider this cautionary tale about Giant Rock. Technically, Frank Critzer was a squatter, since he was living on government land. In the 1930s, Critzer became known as “straight road Critzer” by locals because he built 60 roads all leading in a spider…
Along a solitary dirt road, five miles north of Interstate 15 in Newberry Springs, if you know where to look, you can find Saint Antony’s Coptic Orthodox Monastery. You’ll know right away you’ve ventured into somewhere really amazing…
Bluff Lake is a reservoir located just 3.8 miles from Big Bear Lake, California. Located at 7,600 feet, Bluff Lake Reserve has towering pines, a 20-acre lake and meadow, and majestic outcrops of quartz monzonite.
Once a stopover resort for pack burro trains and stages bringing tourists to Big Bear in the late 1800s, it is home to several species of rare plants and is a thriving animal habitat…
The desert has often played an important role in religions, spiritual enlightenment and artists seeking the esoteric. A half-mile past the turnoff to Pioneertown Road in Yucca Valley, 40 larger-than-life biblical statues from the mid-century rise from the rocky sandscape to offer a peaceful place for contemplation and renewal. It all started when Reverend Eddie…
Sedona, Arizona is equal parts rugged, equal parts resort. You can get all your positive vortices, New Age vibes, crystal readings, sound wave massages and breathtaking adventures you want, but you’re not likely to find a place in Sedona more peaceful than on some of the most coveted real estate in town…
Deputy Will Smithson and men like Ed Silver lived in Daggett at a time when the west was supposed to have been tamed, when it had become civilized, you might say.
Unfortunately, the news of civilization seemed to have bypassed Daggett, and to locals and drifters alike, the Wild West was doing just fine the way it was, thank you.
Justice was going to be meted out in the tradition of the west if the angry mob caught up with Silver.
A rope and a tree waited for the former Buffalo Soldier, unless the sheriff could catch him first…
Twentynine Palms Museum is housed in the oldest public building still in use in the Morongo Basin and provides visitors a chance to experience a 1920s era schoolroom. Townsfolk moved the city’s unique 1927 one-room school building to National Park Drive and redesigned the building to wind up as the Old Schoolhouse Museum. The Campbell…
