Presents a history of the Mojave Road, originally an Indian trail, from the first explorations in the 1820s to its years as a wagon road in the 1870s and 80s, focusing on that portion of the road from the California Desert to the Colorado River.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... II How We Found Mojave WHEN the automobile was delivered into our hands at Los Angeles we wanted to turn around immediately and drive back through the Cajon Pass into the Mojave Desert, but our inquiries about directions met with discouragement on every side. It seemed to be unheard of for two women to attempt such a thing; the distances between the towns where we could get accommodations were too great and the roads were apt to have long stretches of sand where we would get stuck. Our friends drew a dismal picture of us sitting out in the sagebrush beside a disabled car and slowly starving to death. "You could not fix it," they said, "and what would you do?" We suggested that we might wait until somebody came along. They assured us that nobody ever came along. We went to the Automobile Club; they received us with enthusiasm and told us about all the places California is proud of and how to get to them, but California seems not to be proud of the desert, for when we mentioned it our advisers became gloomy. They seemed to have no very definite information and were sure we would not like it. In the face of so much discouragement we hardly dared to ask about Death Valley and when we did, hesitatingly, the question was ignored. We simply could not get there, nobody ever went. The Imperial Valley seemed to be almost as bad. One of the maps they gave us showed a main highway from San Diego over into it, but they said that it was only a gravel road, mountainous and steep, and that we had better stick to the main routes. Evidently they had no faith in our skill as drivers, nor belief in our purpose, so we soon gathered up the maps and innumerable folders about resort hotels, thanked them, and went our way. The collection contained no map of the...