Have you ever wondered if the vastly different cities of Big Bear City and La Quinta, California, could possibly have anything in common? One is high in the San Bernardino mountains , a few minutes from Big Bear Lake, and the other is near the Santa Rosa mountains in the low desert, approximately an hour’s…
Jerome, Arizona. Just a small town with a killer view. Can you hear the sounds? Can you feel the energy? Walk down almost any road in town and let your imagination run loose. You might experience the past if you’re lucky.
Jerome will grow on you. Who knows, you might not ever want to leave. You wouldn’t be the first…
Team work makes the dream work. In hardly anytime at all we were packed up and ready to evacuate. Left the RV park in the middle of a sideways blizzard with no regrets. Still no electricity after 16 hours…
We originally referenced 100 of our favorite desert books five years ago. We still enjoy browsing museum gift shops and used book stores for nuggets of gold in the form of guidebooks, nature guides and history books. Discovering obscure out-of-print books is extra fun. Many new books have been published recently that also deserve our…
Just what keeps the memory of this old town alive more than a century after it was born in the midst of the mining boom of the 19th Century?
Walk down Butte Avenue and, in the middle of the block, you will surely find the answer at the Rand Desert Museum.
Founded in 1943 and given over to Kern County in 1948, the museum is the heart and soul of the old town…
Pasadena, California.The young girl sat in the garden, listening, as her grandfather, a self-made millionaire, told of floating above the Earth in hot air balloons, supplying intelligence on Rebel forces to the Union Soldiers standing below. Grandfather was Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, scientist and inventor. His influence on the world was notable indeed, and…
One of the most interesting developments of 1889 was the San Bernardino County Supervisors’ decision to construct a bridge across the Mojave River, and the angry debate that ensued over the ideal location…
An unassuming yet historically significant midcentury-modern building can be found on a small patch of land in a desert city known all over the world. Without further ado, we present the Owen Coffman American Legion in Palm Springs. The original American Legion in the great town actually goes back to the late 1930s, when a…
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…
The Mojave Road. It still stirs the imagination like few other places in this amazing desert. Before the railroad came along in the years after the Civil War, the Mojave Road was the preferred, and often dangerous, route from all points east, to the Southern California coast. Rock Spring was an important stop along the trail. So much so that the U.S. Army designated it an official military post…
