Mojave Desert - Cities and Regions

Cities and Regions

While the Mojave Desert itself is sparsely populated, it has increasingly become urbanized in recent years. Las Vegas, Nevada is the largest city in the Mojave, with a metropolitan population of around 1.9 million in 2006. Lancaster is the largest California city in the desert, and over 850,000 people live in areas of the Mojave attached to the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, including Palmdale and Lancaster (referred to as the Antelope Valley); and Victorville, Apple Valley and Hesperia (referred to as the Victor Valley) attached to the Inland Empire metropolitan area, the 14th largest in the nation. Smaller cities in the Mojave include St. George; Lake Havasu City; Kingman; Laughlin; Bullhead City; and Pahrump. All have experienced rapid population growth since 1990.

Towns with fewer than 30,000 people in the Mojave include Barstow, California; Rosamond, California; Needles, California; Nipton, California; Ridgecrest, California; Mesquite, Nevada; Hurricane, Utah; Moapa Valley, Nevada; California City, California; Twentynine Palms, California; Joshua Tree, California; Pioneertown, California; Lone Pine, California; Boron, California and Mojave, California. The California portion of the desert also contains Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, noted for experimental aviation and weapons projects, and the largest Marine Corps base in the world at Twentynine Palms. Mojave airport is also home to a long term storage facility for large airplanes due to extremely dry non-corrosive weather conditions and a hard ground ideal for parking aircraft.

The Mojave Desert contains a number of ghost towns, the most significant of these being the gold-mining town of Oatman, Arizona, the silver-mining town of Calico, California, and the old railroad depot of Kelso. Some of the other ghost towns are of the more modern variety, created when U.S. Route 66 (and the lesser-known US Highway 91) were abandoned in favor of the Interstates. The Mojave Desert is crossed by major highways Interstate 15, Interstate 40, Highway 58, US Highway 395 and US Highway 95.

Other than the Colorado River on the eastern half of the Mojave, few long streams cross the desert. The Mojave River is an important source of water for the southern parts of the desert. The Amargosa River flows from the Great Basin Desert south to near Beatty, Nevada, then underground through Ash Meadows before returning to the surface near Shoshone, California and ending in Death Valley.

The Mojave Desert is also home to the Devils Playground, about 40 miles (64 km) of dunes and salt flats going in a northwest-southeasterly direction. The Devils Playground is a part of the Mojave National Preserve and is located between the town of Baker, California and Providence Mountains. The Cronese Mountains are found within the Devils Playground.