Desert Center, California: The Forgotten Desert Town I Can't Stop Visiting
April 20th, 2016
Visits from 2015 & 2016
The Desert Center sign for the 24-hour cafe with the slogan "We lost our keys, we can't close!”
Some of my travels are simply destinations but others become rituals.
For me, Desert Center, California, became a ritual. Every time I drive between Arizona and California, I am compelled to take the Desert Center exit. Most travelers keep moving, and that makes sense because there isn't much of a reason to stop. But I always turn onto that dusty road that leads into the old town.
The dead-end frontage roads that runs along Interstate 10
Before reaching the town, there's a right turn onto a dead-end road lined with dead palm trees that has become my regular pit stop. I get out, walk around, change clothes, and sometimes brush my teeth, depending on how long I've been on the road. Then I dilly-dally around, daydreaming about the town while cars whiz by on Interstate 10.
Desert Center Cafe and Desert Center Gas Station & Garage
The first time I explored Desert Center was in 2015. I returned a few more times in 2016, wandering among abandoned buildings, weathered signs, rusting trucks, and relics left behind from another era. The place felt frozen in time between visits, nothing removed or out of place.
Interior view of the Desert Center Cafe, left exactly as it was on its final day of operation in 2012
I can't fully explain why I'm so fascinated by it. Part of it is definitely the emptiness. I've always been drawn to empty places and forgotten things. Part of it is also the history. But I think much of my fascination comes from “Desert" Steve Ragsdale.
Ragsdale arrived here in the 1920s and built something where most people saw nothing. What began as a desert watering stop eventually grew into a roadside community that served travelers crossing one of the most unforgiving stretches of the Colorado Desert.
Collection of rusted wagons and agricultural equipment in “Desert” Steve Ragsdale’s old pool which was infamously called the "plunge."
The more I learned about him, the more fascinated I became. I do love characters with eccentricities, and his story is a wild mix of adventure, determination, vision, and maybe a little madness. He took a barren patch of desert and built a town. Ragsdale was a committed teetotaler with a reputation for doing things his own way. While he welcomed travelers regardless of race, he also enforced a strict set of personal rules throughout the community. Later in life, he exiled himself from the very place he had spent decades building. Just Google his story, it's entertaining.
Rusted antique wagon frames
I relate to Ragsdale’s willingness to gamble on an idea that makes no sense to anyone else. Seeing the town slowly decay, I used to daydream about buying Desert Center myself. Places that flicker the imagination and make you feel as though you've journeyed into the past, deserve to be preserved.
One time, while passing through on my way home from Barstow, I wanted to mail a postcard. The post office was closed, and there was no stamp machine. Yes, although there is almost nothing else in town, there is a post office.
Rather than give up, I left the postcard along with a few coins and a note, hoping a kind stranger might eventually find it and send it on its way. And someone did. Sometime later, I got word that the postcard had arrived in North Carolina.
It somehow felt perfectly appropriate for Desert Center. A stranger helping another stranger across a vast and desolate landscape. I love that.
Desert Center Gas Station & Garage
Today, Desert Center remains a shadow of what it once was, with remnants of its past scattered everywhere. That's one of the things I find so boggling about it. Actual pieces of history are simply sitting out in the open. Many of the historic buildings stand weathered by decades of wind and sun. Rusted trucks slowly sink into the sand. Old signs are leaning toward the earth and some have already fallen. The silence is interrupted only by the occasional vehicle heading toward Interstate 10.
Vintage gas pumps in front of the Desert Center Gas Station & Garage
…Yet, in a strange way, the place still feels alive. Maybe not with people, but with stories from the old buildings, vehicles, and forgotten corners of town.
I'm deeply drawn to abandoned and empty places, especially those filled with relics and reminders of another time.
So maybe that's why I keep stopping.
And maybe that's why I'll keep coming back, checking in, traipsing around, and seeing what changes.
Let's see what happens.
Photo Gallery ⬗ Visits From 2015 & 2016
