What's in a name?
Pretty much everything if you're the place known as Zzyzx, Calif.
Originally called Soda Springs because of its natural spring water, in 1944 the area was renamed Zzyzx by Curtis Howe Springer, a radio evangelist who built his broadcast career while on the air at KDKA in Pittsburgh.
http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/hold-for-buck-edited-zzyzx-weird-name-weirder-town/19568724
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-- Springer had his own rabbit warrens (they are still there; a bit south of the facility along the old T&T roadbed.) Rabbit was one of the featured items on the menu.
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-- The facility has no connection to infrastructure. Solar and wind power the entire facility (with diesel backup, of course.) The rooms and common areas have propane heat (a welcome thing on cold desert nights.)
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-- There is a warm spring (76 degrees) on the back side of the facility. It contains an almost-extinct fish species, the Mojave Chub, likely a resident of the massive Lake Mannix which covered the area long ago.
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-- Water at the facility is very brackish and has laxative properties (the facility is on the shore of a normally dry lake which is rich in mineral salts.) Fresh water is trucked in from elsewhere. Springer served a glass of the water at every meal, touting its "therapeutic" benefits.
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-- Springer secured the land for his resort based on mining claims, which he never worked. That (along with some of the outlandish claims he made) was why the government finally took the place over in the 70s and handed it over to the UC system.
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-- The name Zzyzx had nothing to do with his wanting to be the last entry in the phone book or whatever. He simply wanted his facility to be the "last word in health resorts."
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It is a very fascinating place in a rather quirky desert. For other strange stuff around the Mojave I highly recommend Bill Mann's series of books. He was a true desert explorer and, while attached to the Mojave River Valley Museum in Barstow, created some really good books highlighting stuff from the interesting to the truly bizarre (google the "Mojave Megaphone," for one.)
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One of the most interesting manmade things to ever grace a desert was the Mojave Phone Booth, which was about 25 miles east of Zzyzx as the raven flies. A phone booth literally in the middle of nowhere, it received thousands of calls monthly from all over the world. Probably the first major viral Internet phenomenon, it was called heavily from late 1997 until Mary Martin, the superintendent of the preserve, who hated life as much as she hated the desert, ordered it removed in 2000.
Some other factoids about the place:
.
-- Springer had his own rabbit warrens (they are still there; a bit south of the facility along the old T&T roadbed.) Rabbit was one of the featured items on the menu.
.
-- The facility has no connection to infrastructure. Solar and wind power the entire facility (with diesel backup, of course.) The rooms and common areas have propane heat (a welcome thing on cold desert nights.)
.
-- There is a warm spring (76 degrees) on the back side of the facility. It contains an almost-extinct fish species, the Mojave Chub, likely a resident of the massive Lake Mannix which covered the area long ago.
.
-- Water at the facility is very brackish and has laxative properties (the facility is on the shore of a normally dry lake which is rich in mineral salts.) Fresh water is trucked in from elsewhere. Springer served a glass of the water at every meal, touting its "therapeutic" benefits.
.
-- Springer secured the land for his resort based on mining claims, which he never worked. That (along with some of the outlandish claims he made) was why the government finally took the place over in the 70s and handed it over to the UC system.
.
-- The name Zzyzx had nothing to do with his wanting to be the last entry in the phone book or whatever. He simply wanted his facility to be the "last word in health resorts."
.
It is a very fascinating place in a rather quirky desert. For other strange stuff around the Mojave I highly recommend Bill Mann's series of books. He was a true desert explorer and, while attached to the Mojave River Valley Museum in Barstow, created some really good books highlighting stuff from the interesting to the truly bizarre (google the "Mojave Megaphone," for one.)
.
One of the most interesting manmade things to ever grace a desert was the Mojave Phone Booth, which was about 25 miles east of Zzyzx as the raven flies. A phone booth literally in the middle of nowhere, it received thousands of calls monthly from all over the world. Probably the first major viral Internet phenomenon, it was called heavily from late 1997 until Mary Martin, the superintendent of the preserve, who hated life as much as she hated the desert, ordered it removed in 2000.
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