Recently, my wife, Joanne, and I spent nine days, at our desert “cabin” on five acres at Twentynine Palms, California, our second home. Actually, we go there some six or seven times a year. This is not posh Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert or those many resorts northwest of the Salton Sea. Twentynine Palms is some 50 miles north, perhaps 2,500 feet higher and adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park. This is the high Mojave desert.
Additionally, Twentynine Palms boasts the largest United States Marine Corps Base in the world at almost 1,000 square miles, known as the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center.
Our family has get-togethers at the cabin on most Thanksgivings and Easter holidays.
Unfortunately, when we arrived this January, the situation was alarming. A recent freeze had broken the pipes of our 50-year-old water tower. Our refrigerator had quit and now offered odious melted ice cream and spoiled food. The handle to our discarded evaporative cooler (now air conditioner) had turned on and water was gushing from the old copper line out into the sand.
Quickly, we drove to Sears in Yucca Valley and bought a refrigerator. From a friend, we found a handyman service to repair the water pipes and insulate them. On the fifth day, Sears installed the new refrigerator. So, the current problems have been solved. Nevertheless, this five acres of desert has a more interesting history.
More than 100 years ago, this was just desert land with a few Indian tribes, Mojave, Chemehuevi, and Serrano, in an area close to an oasis of perhaps 29 palm trees. Prospectors came, traded with the Indians and searched for gold. Many of these settlers claimed gold mines. However, after World War I, Dr. James B. Luckie, a Pasadena physician, founded a sanitarium at Twentynine Palms for “gassed” veterans to recuperate in the dry air. (The Germans used lethal “mustard” gas in WWI. )
In 1940-41, both the Army Air Force and the Navy Air trained glider pilots at the gigantic dry lake in the area.
In the late 1940s, the Bureau of Land Management maps designated the land where our “cabin’ is located as US Navy property.
Information gathered from deceased Auntie Calla’s diary indicates my wife’s family ventured into this Bureau Of Land Management homestead land in 1948. Joanne’s father was a Navy veteran of WWII and served as a gyro operator on the bridge of the USS Canberra, which took a direct hit from the Japanese off the Mariannas. He survived and recuperated at the Awahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, a designated Naval Hospital, during WWII.
After his discharge, he returned to his Pasadena home. By 1948, he was interested in real estate. At this time, the BLM was offering this land to WWII veteran homesteaders. Raymond Hart was one of the many veterans who purchased the five-acre plots for $25 per acre, but with a stipulation, which was that certain improvements had to be completed within five years; basically, a one room cabin. Thus, the first action was to pour a cement slab. However, in those early days, water and electricity were not available.
The veterans did build their one-room cabins; yet over the next 60 years, many cabins have deteriorated back to the cement slab and held on the county tax rolls for back taxes. Only a few were maintained by their offspring.
After the first one-room cabin was built, Hart poured a larger slab of cement, crossing the tee to the first building, and now the “cabin” became more than twice its size. Additionally, Raymond built three wonderful sheds, two for storage and one for personal waste disposal, an “outhouse.”
Some more history. As a member of a machine-gun platoon, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I had returned from Korea in March 1952 to Camp Pendleton at Oceanside. In 1953, I met Joanne on the beach. We married in 1954, had our first boy in 1955, twin boys in 1958, a girl in 1961. In 1957, I had earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees and began teaching at John Muir High School in Pasadena. After four years, I left teaching and found a career in aerospace.
After a 32-year career, I retired, finally, negotiating contracts with the Navy to teach sailors how to fire missiles out of submarines.
In my career, we moved up and down the state. By 1966, we lived in Redlands, California, some 100 miles from the cabin.
Thus, our most wonderful family memories are those of our kids learning to ride motorcycles and drive cars at the cabin. Of course, there still is a dirt road in front.
About five years ago, we decided to modernize. We had the Twenty-nine Palms Water District bring a waterline in from a half a mile at a very expensive price. So, now, the cabin has a kitchen, bathroom and service porch for washer and dryer. We fenced most of the property.
Today, our cabin is almost 60 years old. It has tremendous history. Our children and our grandchildren love the cabin and will carry on our family traditions, identifying animal tracks and the many rocks and minerals on the desert floor.
We, all, love our wonderful “little cabin on the desert.”
Burton Anderson, a U.S. Marine veteran of the Korean War, has lived in California for about 50 years. He has a background in aerospace industry. He can be reached at ba****@*ol.com. The Board of Contributors is comprised of local writers whose views appear in the Times opinion pages on Tuesdays and Fridays.
