People have come to the desert for five main reasons:

1. to get to the other side, to arrive someplace else, usually a big city, on foot and by pack mule, horseback, camel, covered wagon, stagecoach, railroad, automobile, bicycle, motorcycle and aircraft

2. to sell stuff to people crossing the desert, including: gas, oil, tires, food, lodging, maps, and souvenir gems, postcards, Indian crafts, Route 66 geegaws, porcelain figurines and other celebrity merchandise (especially of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Bettie Boop), and alleged UFO artifacts

3. to take away precious minerals: gold, silver, borax, gems, salts and other valuable chemicals needed or wanted in our industrial and population centers

4. to get away: fleeing other people — as hermits and religious groups; fleeing prying eyes — whether mobsters making a "hit" or military engineers testing secret aircraft; fleeing legal restrictions on marriage, gambling and prostitution; fleeing ecosystems that might be damaged — including off-road vehicle fans, model rocket clubs, armies training for desert warfare and again military engineers using salt beds as giant crash-resistant runways

5. to enjoy and learn about what makes it unique, engaging in recreation such as hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting (especially quail, partridge and — by lottery — bighorn sheep) and studying the desert's geology, ecology, history and cultural features

Imagine a shallow "X," like this:

  *                 * "north fork"
     *           *
        *     *
           *
        *     *
     *           *
  *                 * "south fork"

To add a little variety, you can imagine the Old Spanish Trail, steeper than I-15 going from Barstow to the northeast, and old Arrowhead Highway, which later became the route of the old Salt Lake Railroad, following the upper right fork a little to the south. These are two variations on the "north fork" The old Mojave Road went almost straight to the east from Barstow, and is the only one that mostly isn't paved today. Think of this as the "middle fork." So there are 5 roads coming out of the center of the "X" to the right. But two main distinctions predominate: the "north fork" and the "south fork."

This has been the shape of the crossings of the Mojave for a long time. Both forks were used by Jedediah Smith in his explorations. Both were used by pack mules and wagon trains crossing the desert. Both became major rail routes: the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe. Both became US highways: US-91 and Route-66. Both were used by the "Okies" fleeing the dust bowl. And of course both are now interstates.

• Half of habitat for federally listed endangered species can be found on public lands in California.
  

• When the Santa Fe Railroad established the towns along present-day Route 66 between Barstow and Needles, they named them in alphabetical order: Amboy, Bagdad, Chambless, Danby, Essex, Fenner, Goff, Homer, Ibis, Java, Khartoum.

Last update 11:58 AM Fri. 27-Feb-2004 by ABS.