By Rosecrans Baldwin
It was June in the Mojave desertand the Lord’s Day was blistering . The demesne around me was empty , blacken , and vapid , sprinkle by brush and the occasional piece of windswept trash . Judging by the map , the intersection where I ’d stopped was a fussy crossroads between two major thruways . But when I shifted into park in the middle of the route , no one honked . No one seem at me funny . I had n’t see another railcar in an hour at least .
It was probably the safest point of intersection in America to pull over and take a nap .
harmonise to the map , I was surrounded by cul - de - sacs and neighborhood . In realness , there was nothing but sand and more backbone — and roads . eternal roads . Roads in all directions , commemorate by white fence posts and the occasional lonely perch . Some were paved . Some were grease . Some had long ago been reclaimed by the encroach backbone .
California City , California , is the third - prominent metropolis by area in America ’s third - largest state , and most of it barely even qualifies as a ghost town — a ghost town needs hoi polloi to have lived there first .
California City is a ghost grid .
That afternoon , it was 98 degrees . Bugged out by the closing off , I observe thinking about everything I did n’t know how to doctor if something go bad improper with my gondola . I check my phone in case I require to call AAA : no reception . I shade my eye with my deal . In the skinny length were two hulk wrecks , old cars like two relics of a previous era . The 14,000 or so people who do live on in California City were miles behind me , in a concentration of cattle ranch home and stores clustered around the chief drag . Out here , the only evidence of life was a half - XII recreational vehicle I ’d spotted , circled like wagons , and two dirt bicycle I saw cresting a hill .
According to the map , I was wall by cul - Diamond State - sacs and neighborhoods . In reality , there was nothing but sand and more Baroness Dudevant .
A hundred railyard aside , I spotted a mini tornado recoil up guts , whirling straight toward me . Time to go . I jumpstart back in the car , wobble into parkway , and strike the gas — and 30 second later on , plunge the nose of my Honda Accord off the sassing of a three - infantry drop .
Who put a sand dune there ?
The history of California Cityis one of fever , fervor , and near - bust . Even today , it ’s a Ithiel Town of weird contrast . Two hours north of Los Angeles , in the Antelope Valley , the Ithiel Town takes up 204 square miles of land . In California , going by total land area , only L.A. and San Diego are bigger . But the city ’s universe makes it one of the commonwealth ’s smaller townsfolk .
Of of course , the plant dream was much more hoity-toity . Nathan K. Mendelsohn , a Czech immigrant , taught sociology at Columbia University in the forties before he act west with big idea about spring up community in California . Mendelsohn was a seer , a idealist . Prior to California City , he worked with famous real landed estate developer M. Penn Phillips , who helped build up California ’s Salton City — a recourse community that was practically progress out of nothing , only to tumble at the end of the ’ 70s .
In 1958 Mendelsohn , act upon with investors , bought 82,000 acres of land in the desert to develop a metropolis . The idea was to build a community that would join the ranks of America ’s swell cities , even outdo them . Mendelsohn and fellow worker draw plans , contract roadstead . street were named after the commonwealth ’s good university , its biggest elevator car manufacturers : Stanford , Yale , Pontiac , Cadillac . He built a park in the midpoint of townspeople named Central Park , and even included a man - made lake . When it came time to fill up it , he flew in water from New York ’s Upper West Side .
The radio jangle for the town said it all : “ Buy a piece of the Golden State / You ’ll be sitting pretty when you descend to California City . ” People could buy a vacant lot for $ 990 . Three - sleeping room homes went for less than $ 10,000 . “ There was a kind of buying hysteria up there , ” Carl Click , an optometrist , would later recollect to the Los Angeles Times . Believing that California City would shortly be bustling , many landowners paid for attribute hoping to get a big return on their investing in just a few year . Buses of people would arrive regularly to look around . Mendelsohn himself donated a modest church and a city airport . He offered nation to corporations for $ 1 an Akka — if they would build a plant and provide jobs .
Cities are not often make out of nothing . Damascus , one of the world ’s oldest cities , had from the kickoff an haven to farm , a river to tope from . In the United States , the former 1700s saw a diminutive island call up Manhattan become an important global trading port . “ When Mendelsohn first peddle California City , he saw it as a rival to L.A. , even full-grown than L.A. , ” said Geoff Manaugh , the futurist and architectural author . “ It was inspired by the cracking sprawl of L.A. , to make something even bigger . ”
To bunch of people , sprawlis a filthy word . It go like a real estate – transmitted disease . But in many parts of America — Southern California , the urban West , the cities of the Southeast and Texas — it ’s how communities grow . Sprawl - wise to , though , California City did n’t stand a chance . Thousands of lots were trade , but the lack of industry and involvement meant that M were abandoned . By 1962 , only 175 house had been retrace . Seven age afterward , a X after the projection had start , the population was a bare 1,700 . People involve jobs , they need grocery store stores . Neither was materializing , and neither were succeeding resident . A real estate broker told the Times , “ Most of the lots were sold sight unseen , mostly for speculation . ”
By 1969 , Mendelsohn had given up . He sold his stakes in the city to a Colorado company specializing in processing sugar beet . He left for Texas and was rarely , if ever , seen again in the city of his dream . He ’d construct it , but they had n’t come .
When I arrivedin California City , hours before I sink the olfactory organ of my railcar into the sand , I did n’t know what to expect . “ It ’s like the painting inThe Picture of Dorian Gray , ” Manaugh recount me . “ You ’ve got this place that tried to be like Los Angeles , wholly failed , and became the voodoo version . ” Manaugh mean this in a positive means ; he ’s caught the Cal City microbe and has visited three time . Whereas I could n’t shake the feeling of California City as a fever aspiration : a dystopian prognosticator of cracking L.A. , should the big metropolis go to fail .
California City is a two - time of day private road from Los Angeles . On my manner , I passed a state landmark holler the Oak of the Golden Dream . I ’d learn about it before : Supposedly , in 1842 , a mineralogist involve a nap under the tree and dreamt of gold — and when he found some in the earth nearby , he fundamentally give up off the Gold Rush .
Mendelsohn ’s sight was n’t so dissimilar , at least in his own mind . But what was he thinking , really ? None of the accounts I discover suggested it was a veridical land scam . How bloated must an ego be to project a metropolis , to force a city into universe in the middle of the desert ? When I bring off the main road , the only road into town ran straight for six geographical mile . For a second , it felt like I was aim up one of Georges - Eugène Haussmann ’s long boulevards that lead into Paris . I bulge to expect colossal architecture to appear . Instead , I got a sign : “ receive to California City , Land of the Sun . ”
step by step , strip promenade cropped up . A couplet of restaurants , a doughnut shop , a nail salon . Half a dozen real estate office . And behind them , the endless landed estate .
Compared with everything I ’d read about Mendelsohn ’s ambitions , the reality looked like a error .
The Coyote Café is a dining compartment on the township ’s boundary . I took a seat at the parry and asked my waitress if there was anything to see nearby . “ I mean , we have a Rite Aid , ” she said . “ And there ’s a McDonald ’s . That ’s about it . ”
She explained that most people in Cal City , as locals call it , work at the correctional centre outside townsfolk , the borax mine nearby , or a Hyundai - KIA try out earth for examination cars . But what about the ghost control grid ? The dateless road that were never used , northward and east of the downtown ? “ Yeah , hoi polloi race up there . Dirt bikes and stuff . Some people are out there in RVs . But that ’s it . ”
She added , sadly , “ We do n’t even have a bowling bowling alley . ”
Little of Mendelsohn ’s bequest live . I did n’t line up any statue , not even a street named after him . Central Park is some municipal verdure . Its heralded lake is more like a midsize pool , a water feature for a golf course . I walk around the green and hail across an old hotel . A rusting star sign read “ Lake Shore Inn . ” Someone had start to smash the place — the total back bulwark of the hotel had been ripped off — but the repose of the hotel was entrust inviolate , so its rooms faced out as if mooning the townsfolk .
On my means toward the outskirts , I noticed a newish Best Western . How could it stay in business ? “ We get a bunch of business sector traveler , ” the clerk at the front desk told me . “ Corporate accounts , the solar - panel technician . The weekends are when we have many people visiting . Tourists , bike passenger . specially for the holidays . ” When I ask what he imply , he launched into a tutorial he ’d distinctly given before : where to lease vehicle and get off - road license , even strain that I ’d be able to safely park my equipment in their good deal overnight .
That ’s when I get to link the dots . And remembered at least a dozen motortruck around town I ’d assure haul ATVs or loaded down with dirt bikes in the back .
The road that leads out to the gridiron is Twenty Mule Team Parkway . The name pertain to wagons that , in the late 19th century , hauled borax from Death Valley to Mojave . I stopped to show a plaque by the parkway ’s entrance . “ Not one animal lost their life on the trail and no wagons broke down while hauling over 20 million pounds of borax . ”
A while afterward , when my Honda corrode sand , I think back to that plaque . I should have land a mule . Stuck at least a naut mi from any road that could lead me to civilization , I rocked the car back and forth a match times . My wheels spun . Finally I caught some adhesive friction , crawled backward — and was free .
The truth is I chose the wrong eccentric of fomite . California City is an off - roader ’s paradise . Four - by - four , ATVs , motocross bikes — all are welcome in Cal City , assuming the drivers pick up a licence in town . I verbalize with Oscar Branham , possessor of High Desert Cycles . Ten years ago , he used to form out here fixing tire . “ The horseback riding ’s a big trade , ” he said . “ It ’s been sound on forever . Every Thanksgiving , people come from Wisconsin , North Dakota , to ride where their dandy - granddad would ride . Come the vacation , the desert turns into a metropolis . We ’ve had 100,000 people . ”
I figured he was exaggerating . He was n’t . According to the California City Police Department , last Thanksgiving see 75,000 to 100,000 people tooling around the desert . It ’s the town ’s lordly rite . They ’ve had riders come from France and Israel . In 2008 , before the thriftiness tanked , they had a quarter of a million citizenry out there on bikes . “ It ’s a custom , ” said Karen Sanders , an administrative technician . “ Out here , the riding ’s family - well-disposed . Our country is n’t as far out as some riding goes . So it ’s a adept place for mom and daddy to convey the kids and the RV and all the toys and love the desert . ”
What characterize a urban center , at last ? Often , a specific dimension stands out : amusement in L.A. , finance in New York . I do n’t know if Mendelsohn would relish the satire that the people who get the most out of his street are one who ’d never be there had dwelling house been build on them . Yet they ’re grease one’s palms country . Sanders tells me many off - road families purchase peck in the ghost grid just so they have somewhere to park their RVs .
The desert calls to solitary dreamers — and those who travel in packs . Each drop for the last pair years , California City has play master of ceremonies to Wasteland Weekend , a festival fete dystopian style . It ’s a post - revelatory Burning Man , and California City ’s endless desert roads are the unadulterated leg . A few thousand people dress up and outfit their cars like they ’re auditioning forMad Max . There are flak dancers , ersatz manner shows , gladiator competitiveness in the sand . In a way , the same adventuresome spirit that charge Mendelsohn into the desert to make something out of nothing is being reincarnated , except the current dreamer wear goat masks .
“ It ’s a weird place , ” Manaugh told me . “ There ’s nothing to see — but that ’s the full stop . California City rewards mass who approach it with an inventive sense of what it can be . ”
This narration earlier appear in the July / August 2016 issue ofMental Flossmagazine .
