Have you ever wondered what it used to look like in the Mojave Desert of yesteryear? When ingenuity and pure desert grit was king? Do you want to learn secrets the desert has to tell? They’re all around us if we just look. Please join us for one of many trips through time illuminating the Mojave Desert’s amazing past and present. Trip the light fantastic with us, after all, it’s the desert way…
This old building on Palm Canyon Road in Palm Springs, California, now a See’s Candies store, has stood as a silent witness to the goings on since the 1930s, thankfully changing little until See’s Candies permanently closed in October 2021.
Did you know that in the 1950s, Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs was a two-way street, and Sees Candies was a game store? Well, now you do. A stretch of Indian Canyon Drive in downtown Palm Springs was converted from a one-way to two-way thoroughfare in 2020 to the tune of $5.5 million.
Tyler’s Burgers, in Palm Springs, 2019. In 1938, it was the only bus station in town.
In 1859, this place started out as Fort Mohave, and relations between Native Americans and the Immigrants from the East were strained. It is the current and ancestral home of the Pipa Aha Macav, also known as the “River People. We know them as the Mojave Indians. By 1892, the military buildings became a boarding school for the First Nations people of the Southwest. In effect, a re-education camp to erase all vestiges of their native culture. Fortunately for all of us, the endeavor was not completely successful. The buildings are many years gone, with only the water tower foundation blocks and a few sidewalks remaining. In the distance, the Government Road, which anyone with a 4×4 and a sense of adventure knows is the Mojave Road.
The Great Depression, Prohibition and the Roaring 30s, all at the San Bernardino County Courthouse on Arrowhead Highway, in San Bernardino, California. An iconic building in the history of the area.
The First Street Bridge, in Barstow CA, and seen the town as it was in 1891, right there where the tracks are today. Sadly, the famous bridge will soon be gone the way of the original town site.
Popular with teenagers, the long-gone Burger Haven on Main Street once served malted shakes, cheeseburgers and fries where the present-day Toyota dealership now stands in Barstow, California.
T Cross K Ranch was established as a cattle ranch in 1912 in what now is the Mission Creek Preserve in the Sand to Snow National Monument located near Desert Hot Springs, California. Only the giant fireplace remains of the main house of T Cross K Ranch in Mission Creek Preserve.
Just north of Daggett. Because the wagons appear to be empty, and since the team is headed out of town, we can guess that they have delivered another load of Borax, which will be prepared for further shipment by train.
A DC-3, known to the military as the C-47, comes in for a landing at the Camp Young Army Airfield, sometime in 1943. Little known to many travelers on Interstate-10, they are driving alongside what used to be one of the most important airfields in the country for a moment in time, Today we know it as Chiriaco Summit, and the George S. Patton Museum, It was the General’s headquarters, 78 years ago.
Recommended Resources
