Today’s trivia you didn’t know you needed to know: Zyzzyx Road, a low budget indie horror movie from 2006, not to be confused with another 2006 indie horror titled Zzyzx with a different cast and rebranded Burned, is known for being the lowest-grossing film of all time. It made a grand total of (drum roll,…
As the saying goes, so many books, so little time. Picking out your favorite book would be akin to picking out your favorite child. Each has its own unique character. We’ve always had a special affinity for older books. Where words took center stage, not glaring, over-edited photos. Their crafty use of language painted vivid…
Newberry Springs, California, is known for its former private lakes where water skiing stars like Esther Williams once trained and where one of the largest population of Tricolored Blackbirds on the West Coast gather, but it has another reputation about how the Mojave River engulfed houses near its riverbed and other tales of tragedy. When…
We had an amazing adventure exploring lovely Afton Canyon. The Mojave River flows above ground here and ranges from a small creek to a couple of feet deep depending on seasonal rainfall totals. Afton Canyon lies in part along the old Mojave Indian Trail, near the 35th parallel, that extended from the Colorado River to…
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…
Calico’s reputation as a ghost town is well deserved as there are numerous reports of actual ghosts being sighted. Lucy Bell King Lane, a longtime resident who ran Lucy Lane’s General Store has often been seen in her store.
Margaret Olivier, the last schoolteacher, has been seen teaching in her classroom. Tourists who have talked with Margaret thought she was part of the staff dressed in period costumes, only to find out she has been dead since 1932. There is even the ghost story of Dorsey, the shepherd dog that carried the US Mail between various mines.
Was that really the howling wind that woke us up at 3 a.m. at our Calico campsite, or was it Lucy Lane?
“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”
—John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Perhaps no dusty desert town from the 19th Century exemplified Steinbeck’s quote better than Daggett, California. Shootouts, saloons, hangings and frontier justice, the old town had it all, and so much more…
Have you ever wondered what it used to look like in the Mojave Desert in yesteryear? When ingenuity and pure desert grit was king? Do you want to learn secrets the desert has to tell?
Please join us for Part One of many trips through time illuminating the Mojave Desert’s amazing past and present. Trip the light fantastic with us–the desert way…
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…