zzyzx springs and the great soda sink

8/8/2019 ZZYZX Springs And The Great Soda Sink

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ZZYZX Springs and the Great Soda Sink

Desert Critter

awn, early June. Temperature nearing 80°

though it is not yet 7 a.m. I am sprawled onmy stomach amidst blooming flowers and lush grasses and reeds, staring into a fresh-

water pool at the very edge of what early explorers called The Great Soda Sink, that

vast, dry, pitiless, parching flat to the east of me.DThe pool is about as wide as a car and twice as deep. Swaying desert willows shade the pond.

This is the home to the tiny Mojave Tui Chub, and it is the only place they live. These minnowsare barely two inches long. In two nearby pools live genetically similar – but not identical –

chubs. Collectively, the pools are part of Zzyzx Springs. They are the last tiny remnants of the

vast lake that once covered this entire sink more than 20,000 years ago.

Now that’s survival!

Less than 100 yards from here, over the rocks, is Doc Springer’s “castle”. He lasted here barely20 years, but his influence still permeates the Zzyzx Springs area. In the other direction, a long-

abandoned railroad grade can be seen coming down from the Razor Hills. The railroad’s

influence is only a whisper now.

And long before this area had any white man’s name, ancient Indians used these springs and left

their mark with prehistoric artifacts and rock art. Later, the Timbisha Shoshone and Piute knew



these mineral springs as a reliable source of water. It was one of many water sources on a long-distance trail from the interior high deserts to the lush coastal valleys.

The Army discovered the Indian trail and in the 1850s built it up as a wagon road to move troops

to the Coast and the gold fields. A small military outpost was established here, called Hancock’s

Redoubt. The next water for eastbound wagoneers is 30 miles from here, across the salt lake andup a dry, grueling climb toward Kelso. The road was later called the Mojave Trail, and survives

today as a Jeep road.

For twenty years the post slumbered along until the Army moved out. Then in 1908 the Tonopah

& Tidewater Railway arrived and Soda Springs became a flag stop on the way to Silver Lake.

The T&T stayed for its entire forty plus years. But business at the springs, never particularlyrobust, declined to nothing a decade or so before the railroad did. Slowly the desert began

reclaiming the place.

Doc Springer saw the abandoned springs in the mid-1940s and immediately established a “soda

mining” claim on 12,000 acres around the springs. He made up “Zzyzx” to be the last word in the

English language. But instead of mining the omnipresent soda, he and his wife began building asprawling health spa. It is said he recruited laborers from skid-row flophouses in Los Angeles,

promising to feed and house them and teach them a trade.

This he apparently did, all the while creating a near-fiefdom based on his brand of healthy living

and healthy eating. Doc Springer’s laborers built the Castle, a handsome 2-storey home, office,and school at the end of Boulevard of Dreams. They built a cookhouse, a meeting hall, a cement

works, and a small lake. They even built a studio where Springer recorded taped radio programs

selling his brand of health foods and Christian charity. These were broadcast weekly over the

border-blasting radio station XERB out of Tijuana.

When I was a kid living near Seattle, I’d sit in my room late at night listening to an old tuberadio. I could pull in XERB at night because it beamed a 100,000-watt signal straight into the

U.S. from a mountaintop just south of the border. Of course, back then I was listening for

Wolfman Jack, not Doc Springer.

From the outset many considered Springer eccentric and controversial. The U.S. Government

came to consider him a trespasser.

The BLM took a dim view of Doc Springer because he was operating a spa, not a mine. By thelate 1960s it began the process to evict him and close down the spa. The IRS closed in on him for

tax evasion and even the California Food and Drug Commission laid out a number of charges

against his line of health foods. Most charges were later dropped, and the IRS lost in court, but

the BLM soldiered on. Springer and his wife were handcuffed and bodily evicted on April 13,1974.

The U.S. Government continues to this day to try to eradicate the memory of the Springers by

removing the name Zzyzx, but the name lingers on. Zzyzx it still is, to most of us interested in

the area. After all, there are soda springs and seeps in almost every desert, but there is only oneZzyzx Springs.



Doc Springer’s Place on the Boulevard of Dreams

The victors, it is said, write the histories. Nearly everything I’ve read about Dr. Springer has been

the “official” version, such as the “information” signs posted out by the main gate. I’d like to

hear Doc Springer’s version.

Although the BLM was successful in removing the Springers, it didn’t know what to do with an

abandoned health spa. Once again the place began falling into ruin, beset by vandals and theunkind desert weather. The renamed Soda Springs slumbered on until it was “discovered” again

in 1976.

This time a visionary educator saw the value of using the former spa as a learning center. He

convinced the BLM’s parent agency to work with a consortium of southern California colleges to

form the Desert Studies Center. For over 20 years now, the center has offered weekend andsemester courses studying reptiles, birds, insects, geology, and anthropology of the Eastern

Mojave. It is one of only two desert studies centers in the American Southwest.

* * * *

Bill Presch tenaciously defends the Desert Studies Center at Zzyzx. It’s his baby. He’s a good

administrator, watching out for the interests of the DSC. He’s a good teacher, too. Herpetologist.

He knows reptiles and he knows the desert. Seems utterly at home here.

I spent several delightful days here learning about desert wildlife from him and an associate, Dr.Dean Messer. Their enthusiasm for the desert is infectious. They know their stuff and they have

fun doing it. What a learning experience.



And I love the curiosity of these guys. What’s the bird? What’s in the next can trap going up the baranca? What’s under this fallen branch of a Joshua tree? Do dead scorpions fluoresce under a

black light? (Yes. We tried it in the DSC lab.)

Several times I’ve left the desert thinking I hadn’t seen any wildlife. But it is a whole lot more

fruitful when you have a little basic understanding of the wild. For sure it will take time andacquaintance to remember the names of the wildlife I encounter. But what I learned was even

better. I learned how to look for critters, and where, and when.

I learned how best to find scorpions in the desert. There really are quite a lot of them, at least

around the springs. On one night walk, we used flashlights to search for them to no effect. But

with a hand-held black light, we found they were all around us, glowing a ghostly white in thelight. And me in flip-flops! I jumped into the middle of our small circle of people, not wishing a

closer encounter. Turns out these bugs, while nasty looking, don’t produce enough toxins to

make a human feel much more than sharp discomfort.

Other observations:

Tarantula Hawk, not a bird but a large, beautiful insect with a shiny black body and deep

yellow-orange wings, seen near Owls Head Springs.

Horned lizard, can trap area. The can traps are 5-gallon buckets sunk into the ground in asquare pattern extending for several hundred yards up the baranca a mile or so from the

springs. They are uncovered in the evening, then in the morning we checked to see what

fell in during the night. This lizard, about 5” long, lies soft and calm in my hand.

A male and a female velvet ant. Actually these are not ants at all, but wasps. The females

are highly venomous. The males exist for only a few days, their sole purpose being to

impregnate the females. Males are very rare; the insect doctor had never seen one.

Chuckwalla, seen on the rocks on the Kelbaker lava flow. They like it hot, and don’t

even come out of their holes unless it is over 100°F.

Fringe-toed lizards and the larger leopard lizards, nearly a foot long, near the sand dunes.

Desert Sienna, with beautiful non-serrated yellow petals, two to a stalk, seen in the

Joshua Zone of Kelbaker Road (3800 to 4200 feet elevation).

Desert Willow, with its characteristic pale violet blooms on wispy stalks.

Beavertail Cactus, a knee-high plant with flat extensions and brilliant cup-shaped

vermilion flowers.

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zzyzx springs and the great soda sink

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