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Abstract
Despite being some of the harshest environments to design for and inhabit, deserts are considered some of the most malleable in our imagination. Countless military bases, proving grounds, gunneries, and practice fields that simulate other locales prove that in military imagination, deserts are nondescript proxy spaces waiting to be filled with the character of whatever location they are to imitate. The developers’ imagination is not far behind. Through a historical case study of California City, an ambitiously planned but only partially built desert development project, and unpacking of the terms “desert” and “wasteland,” this essay examines the colonial gaze towards the desert that often shapes our perceptions of this unique environment and exposes the fallacies in our thinking that lead us to imagine deserts as a blank slate waiting to be transformed. The paper also highlights the dangers of overconfidence in technology to create techno-utopias and the need to acknowledge the reality of the desert’s harsh environment in any planning or development.
Notes
1 The term “outlaw territory” was initially coined by Steven Brand as “outlaw areas” in a supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog that was published in 1968 and later unpacked by Felicity Scott in Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counterinsurgency. Brand’s original definition listed deserts among the outlaw areas. However, the significance of the term does not lie in its categorization. Instead, the critical insight that Brand’s original statement and Scott’s careful unpacking convey is the characterizations of these places as “sites of exceptions,” where the rule of law is suspended, the boundary between legality and illegality—and between the government and outlaws—is blurred. Brand values these sites as places of invention and experimentation that will enable technological and social progress. However, suspension of law also opens the possibilities of speculation, inequality, and abuses, such as the large-scale land speculation in the case of California City. Felicity Scott, Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counterinsurgency (New York: Zone Books, 2016).
2 Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1893, pp. 197-227.
3 George A. Crofutt, American Progress, ca. 1873. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/cph6388/. Digitized from chromolithograph printed by George A. Crofutt in 1873, after 1872 painting by John Gast with the same title. 37.6 x 49 cm (sheet).
4 Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water (New York: Penguin, 1993).
5 Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 40.
6 Walter Prescott Webb, “The American West: Perpetual Mirage,” Harper’s Magazine 214 (May 1957): 25–31.
7 Bernard Devoto, introduction to Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, by Wallace Stegner (New York: Penguin, 1992), 16–27, 21.
8 Devoto, introduction, 22.
9 Devoto, introduction, 23–24.
10 Devoto, introduction, 23. In the original text, Devoto used the word “licking” instead of defeating. While both words hold the same meaning, the former felt unfamiliar to modern ears. The word is replaced with a commonly known synonym upon editor’s suggestion.
11 Kerwin L Klein, “Frontier Tales: The Narrative Construction of Cultural Borders in Twentieth-Century California,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34: 3 (1992): 464–90, 468.
12 Richard L. Carrico and Frank Norris, History of Land Use in the California Desert Conservation Area (Riverside, CA: Bureau of Land Management, California Desert District Office, 1978).
13 Carrico and Norris, History of Land Use, 43–46.
14 Carrico and Norris, History of Land Use, 87–89.
15 Carrico and Norris, History of Land Use, 94.
16 Kim Stringfellow, “Jackrabbits, Ghost Grids and LandBanking+” The Mojave Project, September 2020, https://mojaveproject.org/dispatches-item/jackrabbits-ghost-grids-and-landbanking/.
17 Stringfellow, “Jackrabbits.”
18 Stringfellow, “Jackrabbits, 98.
19 Salome (1918), The Sheik (1921), The Son of Sheik (1926), The Veils of Bagdad (1953), and Omar Khayyam (1957) were filmed in the Southern California desert. During and after World War II, Hollywood used the area to shoot movies about North African desert warfare. For example, The Five Graves of Cairo (1943), was not only shot in the region but shot precisely at Camp Young of the Desert Training Center. The army assisted in the staging of battle scenes. In the Academy Award nominated film Sahara (1943), some soldiers from the Desert Training Center played German soldiers. Sarah McCormick Seekatz, “Desert Deployment: Southern California’s World War II Desert Training Center,” KCET Artbound Blog, March 15, 2015, https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/desert-deployment-southern-californias-world-war-ii-desert-training-center.
20 Sarah McCormick Seekatz, “A Date with Destiny: Southern California’s Date Industry and the Creation of an Arabian Fantasy,” Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society 24: 2 (Spring 2021): 4–19, 14.
21 In the introduction to the book Urban Design, which he coedited with William S. Saunders, Alex Krieger argues that the 1956 Harvard conference “included a remarkable group of participants, and partially because of their stature, the conference is generally acknowledged as providing the impetus for a broader pursuit of urban design and ultimately for establishing Harvard’s urban design program, the first of its kind.” Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders, eds., Urban Design (Minneapolis, and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), xiii.
22 Urban Design was considered an interdisciplinary field, where many stakeholders interacted, but architects, planners, and landscape architects took the lead. In his opening speech, José Luis Sert remarked on the disciplinary alliance needed between city planners, architects, and landscape architects: I believe we are conscious that city planners, landscape architects, and architects can be only part of a larger team of specialists required to solve urban design problems; but I also believe that our three professions are already very close and that it may be easier first to come to an agreement among ourselves and then, later on, discuss the participation and relationship of the other specialists who should complete the team. “The First Urban Design Conference: Extracts” in Urban Design, Alex Krieger and William S. Saunders eds., (Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 4.
23 “The First Urban Design Conference,” 5.
24 “The First Urban Design Conference.”
25 “The First Urban Design Conference,” 10.
26 “The First Urban Design Conference,” 11–12.
27 “The First Urban Design Conference,” 14.
28 As part of its transformation and to avoid confusion with another South California community, the developers renamed the settlement Arlanza. The area, now a neighborhood in the City of Riverside, still carries this name.
29 In time, two automobile proving grounds owned by Honda and Hyundai, a penitentiary, and most recently, an inland port, were added to the vicinity. While the port is technically in the town of Mojave, it is closer to the Edwards Air Force Base and Borax facility at a twenty-minute driving distance.
30 Nat K. Mendelsohn, A Report to California City Residents and Property Owners (Hollywood, CA: California City Development Company, 1960).
31 Peter Gallison, “War Against the Center,” Grey Room 4 (Summer 2001).
32 Conference of Industrial Development Executives, Executed Office of the President, National Security Resources Board, September 7, 1951, 49-50. Quoted in Gallison, “War Against the Center,” 16.
33 Ezgi İşbilen, “A Virtual City Scratched on Desert Dust: California City and the Allure of the Blank Slate,” Western Humanities Review 72:3 (Fall 2019): 101–35, 108.
34 Jocelyn Gibbs, Outside In: The Architecture of Smith and Williams (Santa Barbara, CA: Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, 2014), 41.
35 Shannon R. Starkey, “The Suspension of Disbelief: California City 1955–1972” (PhD diss., University of California Los Angeles, 2019), 20.
36 Starkey, “Suspension of Disbelief,” 21.
37 The AN-M50 bomb, which accounted for more than ninety-seven percent (by number) of the incendiary bombs dropped on Germany by American forces, was extensively tested at the German Village. See Historic American Engineering Record, “Dugway Proving Ground, German-Japanese Village, South of Stark Road, in WWII Incendiary Test Area, Dugway, Tooele County, UT,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ut0664/.
38 Konrad Wachsmann to Nathan K. Mendelsohn, June 27, 1960, Wachsmann Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, #Wachsmann 613.
39 Wachsmann joined the project a few years after the development company initiated the project. There was already a planning and design office led by Wayne Williams. Wachsmann’s suggestion of a tabula rasa design project contradicted their efforts. Due to his travel schedule, it was also not practical for Wachsmann to collaborate with the office. Civic Center and City Hall are interchangeably used to denote Wachsmann’s design. Both names refer to the same project. For coherency, this essay refers to the project with the title California City Civic Center
40 Konrad Wachsmann, “A New American City Hall,” Art & Architecture (May 1967): 23–27.
41 Wachsmann, “An Autobiography ‘TIMEBRIDGE’ 1901 2001” (unpublished manuscript) Getty Research Institute Library, Graham Foundation: 1981.
42 Wachsmann, “An Autobiography.”
43 The antenna of the integrated broadcasting system is visible in some project drawings, such as its south elevation.
44 Jim Riley ran the local Democratic Party. His wife Barbara was the elected social director of the community club. Their daughter Regina was crowned Snow Queen of Mojave High School. The family constituted 2.4 percent of the town’s population with their recently born tenth child. “What Else Is New With The Rileys?” California City Sun, January 15, 1963.
45 Nathan K. Mendelsohn to Konrad Wachsmann, October 15, 1960, Wachsmann Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, #Wachsmann 613.
46 “A High-Flier Comes Back with a Thud,” Business Week, July 25, 1970.
47 “A High-Flier Comes Back.”
48 Mendelsohn left in resentment and said “For a long time, I told myself it was a question of [White and his team] getting their feet wet. Then I found some of them didn’t know how to swim. I didn’t want to go into deeper water.” “A High-Flier Comes Back.”
49 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 150.
50 Venturi et al., Learning from Las Vegas.
51 Robert Venturi, “A Justification for Pop Architecture,” Arts & Architecture 82:4 (1965): 22.
52 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, “Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas,” Architectural Forum (March 1969): 37–42ff.
53 Timothy Wirth, memo on the subject of [Wachsmann’s] California City Civic Center, August 31, 1971, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.
54 Ursula Cliff, “Are the Venturis Putting Us On?” Design and Environment (Summer 1971): 52–59ff.
55 William White, Memo on the design of California Center billboards, August 4th, 1971, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.
56 Venturi et al., Learning from Las Vegas, 18.
57 Venturi et al., Learning from Las Vegas, 18.
58 Minutes of a meeting about California City, August 28th, 1970, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Associates Collection, Architectural Archives University of Pennsylvania.
59 Regarding the parasitic nature of suburbs, Joseph Rykwert noted: “A suburb must always be parasitic on a town or city. Even when it acquires an independent administration, it is never a financial center, or a center of power. Suburbs were rarely meant to be agriculturally or industrially productive.” Joseph Rykwert, The Seduction of Place (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), 295.
60 Rykwert, The Seduction of Place, 16.
61 Rykwert, The Seduction of Place, 17.
62 “Mendelsohn,” East Kern Historical Museum Society, accessed May 20, 2023, https://ekhms.weebly.com/mendelsohn.html.
63 Starkey, The Suspension of Disbelief, 8–9.
64 Reyner Banham, Scenes in America Deserta (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1982), 44.
65 Jean Baudrillard, America, trans. Chris Turner (New York: Verso, 2010), 124.
66 The history of the site, the cotton and alfalfa farms that were once there, and the Twenty Mule Trail, which cut across most of the town diagonally, were left out of the picture Mendelsohn initially painted.
67 Rama’s ‘lettered cities’ were inspired by literary experiments, governed by the literate, based on rules imported from the old world. Angel Rama, The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).
68 Menna Agha, “The Invention of Nubian Deserts,” Funambulist 44 (2022): 34–39.
69 The issue of abandonment is implicit in the word’s etymology. An explicit reference to abandonment is made in a 1911 Encyclopedia Britannia entry, which describe deserts as “those parts of the land surface of the earth which do not produce sufficient vegetation to support a human population.” An often-quoted implicit reference comes from the word’s origin, which “comes from Lat. deserere, to abandon; distinguish,” quoted in the same entry. The Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, vol. VIM, 11th ed., (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press), 1910–11, https://archive.org/stream/encyclopaediabrit08chisrich/encyclopaediabrit08chisrich_djvu.txt.
70 Vittoria di Palma, Wasteland: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).
71 di Palma, Wasteland, 3.
72 di Palma, Wasteland, 3–4.
73 di Palma, Wasteland, 16.
74 Westen is where the Israelites were banished to suffer and to atone in the Old Testament, and where John the Baptist and Christ willingly went to test and prove themselves in the New Testament. The westen is not simply where redemption happens. It is the vessel “through which redemption can be won.” di Palma, Wasteland.
75 di Palma, Wasteland, 9.
76 di Palma, Wasteland, 10.
77 In the age of AI, mass customization, and smart cities, “techno-utopia” might refer to a wider variety of projects; however, California City is a midcentury development project. The use of techno-utopia refers to the twentieth-century sense of the term with an emphasis on mechanical solutions and exaggerated scale, best exemplified in the megastructures.
78 CBS News, “California City: How a Developer’s Failed Dream Became the State’s Biggest Water Waster,” July 28, 2015, CBS Sacramento, CA.
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Ezgi İşbilen
Ezgi İşbilen is an assistant professor of architecture at Bilkent University. She teaches history survey courses and architectural design studios. Her scholarship explores the dynamic relationship between architectural theory and construction technologies and architectural education in the United States, particularly its postwar transformation. Her dissertation, “Universalism and Its Discontents: Konrad Wachsmann’s Twentieth Century Architecture,” explores these themes through the lens of German American architect Konrad Wachsmann’s postwar practice and pedagogy. She holds a PhD from Virginia Tech and an MArch degree from Middle East Technical University.