Zzyzx

I-15 taken from Zzyzx Road

When daybreak came I was zooming through Victorville with the great desert encampment of Los Angeles fading in hazy distance behind.  It was a familiar theme—me striking out to the wilderness by myself.  Ahead lay the open Mojave Desert, mostly free from human encampment as Los Angeles used to be, except for Las Vegas. 

Many times, while traveling I-15 to points north, I have pondered a strange sign before Baker that reads “Zzyzx Next Exit.”  Today I would learn what it means.  I turned off on Zzyzx Road and entered Mojave National Preserve.

Zzyzx Road follows the edge of Soda Lake—a dry playa, empty of water except after heavy rain, I’m told.  Today it was very dry.  

Rising from the edge the lake, arid hills with hardly a stick of vegetation.  A few palm trees survive with almost no water.  

Long before people arrived here some 11,000 years ago, the land was much wetter.  Soda Lake was fed by the Mojave River, dry today, but then a slow, meandering stream lined with trees, perhaps cottonwoods and elms, teaming with catfish, muskrats and raccoons, so I’m told.  Soda Lake rippled with blue water in the breeze, and wore green food for deer along its edges.  I made that up, but it seems to follow from dull climatologically reading. 

After five miles of dusty driving, I came to Zzyzx with its God-fearing history.  These natural ponds, an oasis in the desert are last remnants of more livable.

In the middle of last century a radio preacher discovered the deserted ponds and felt a divine calling to raise them to their highest and best, for the glory of God.  Curtis 'Doc' Springer brought the gospel and homeopathic healing to the desert with a health center, perhaps thinking that no one would care where a preacher built a small town on so vast an openness.

Curtis 'Doc' Springer

Springer invented the name Zzyzx to ensure it the last listing in any directory of health services.  He thought, beyond almost anyone’s sense of reason, that being listed last added to importance or would be easier to find.  

Main street, Zzyzx

The healer and preacher attracted much attention and built a thriving business for ailing believers that lasted thirty years.  The American Medical Association gave Springer the dubious title, "King of Quacks."  He built the spa on land he didn't own, and was evicted in 1974, arrested for food and drug law violations and spent several months in jail.  He retired to Las Vegas and died in 1986.  

Today, Springer’s facilities serve a research center that studies natural environments scientifically, perhaps without divine intervention, who knows for sure.  Often, the history of a rural place shows two village cultures fading into each other, but in Zzyzx, the new culture seems to have completely displaced the old. Picture 028

In my next posting, perhaps tomorrow, you’ll feel what hiking in the silence of open desert is like, at least I hope to bring you along.