“It’s alive and waiting for you. Ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you, or the cold at night. A thousand ways the desert can kill”
The Mojave is a desert of wind, temperature extremes, Joshua Trees and solitude. When most people hear the word ‘desert,’ images of tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes and bleak desolation typically come to mind. In reality, the Mojave is anything but a wasteland. Amongst the sand and sagebrush lie many places of beauty and wonder, and of historic importance. Some are the result of time and the elements, some are the result of man and his efforts to live in the Mojave, both in recent and prehistoric times. Let’s go see what we can find.
I spun off I-40 at exit 96 to see if I could find the old Whiting Bros. Gas Station. I’d seen some pictures of it and knew it wasn’t too far out of the way. Exit 96 is also the exit to use to get to McCartys, a small town that originated from a farming and trading community on the Acoma Indian reservation. It was later named McCarty after a railroad contractor who had his camp in the area during the 1880s.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
