Photo: The Rattlesnake that came to say hello to the author at Lake Mojave at Zzyzx
Travelers along Interstate 15 between San Diego and Las Vegas pass a mysterious sign that says Zzyzx (pronounced Sigh-Six, but with a z sound). If you get off at this sign, the next sign tells you that you are entering the Mojave National Preserve (National Park Service). The dirt road leads to a parking lot that overlooks the stunning white dry Soda Lake. Birders often park there, hiking the marked trail to the freshwater pond named Lake Tuendae Lake that skirts the west side of the dry lake. If you have the gate key, you can continue on to the Desert Research Center that is cooperatively managed by the National Park Service and California State University Fullerton (CSUF).
The CSUF research station is around 20 old buildings, most of which are one-story dorms for visiting scientists like me. Still standing are a few decaying buildings were once part of the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa owned by Curtis Howe Springer. In 1944 Springer changed the name of the site from Soda Springs to Zzyzx, a name he invented to be the last word in the English language. By the late 1960s, complaints about medical practices, tax evasion, and false advertising attracted the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) in 1974 to dispute his mining claim permit that was issued strictly for mining salts. The white salts are sodium bicarbonate, which we use for baking soda, and sodium carbonate used for detergent, soap, and paper.
Previous to this, Padre Francisco Garces traveled nearby with Mojave guides in 1776.They followed the Mohave Trail across the dry lake, traveling from spring to spring like people have done for millennia. Interestingly, the trail has undergone name changes as various outsiders used it. It next became the Old Spanish Trail, the Old Government Road, and finally the Mojave Road. The trail, whatever it was called, led from the Colorado River to Cajon Pass between the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains. Another path across the dry lake is the abandoned bed of the old Tonopah-Tidewater railway.
The dry lake that sits there today was once part of ancient Lake Mojave that was fed by the Mojave River intermittently for the past 18,000 years. For 10,500years or more, the land was the traditional territory of the Desert Serrano. Stone tools and other useful ancient items were found around Soda Lake. After the lake dried up around 9,800 years ago, the presence of springs also brought Chemhuevi and Mojave people, as all Indian travelers in the Mojave Desert made their seasonal round to hunt, gather food and medicinal plants, and sow the next crops. When I visited the field station, at the spring were rushes (for baskets), sedges and cattails (for building materials), yerba mansa (for medicine), and mesquite (for food).
Oh yeah, a Mojave rattlesnake came by to say hello.
