Zzyzx, a desert oasis

If you wanted to be the last entry in the telephone book, what better name to have than Zzyzx (ZYE zix). I didn’t make up that name, in 1944 Curtis Howe Springer, self proclaimed doctor and Methodist minister, radio evangelist, and an enterprising con man made it up, proclaiming it to be the last word in the English language. He planned and built a sixty-room hotel, a radio broadcasting station, a church, a health spa, a private airstrip, a pond with a fountain and several outbuildings on a spring fed oasis near Baker, California on the edge of an enormous playa, out in the East Mojave Desert. Springer solicited donations from guests for his special cures for all sorts of afflictions from hemorrhoids to hair loss to serious diseases. The elixir was a concoction made up a celery, carrot and parsley juice. He also offered what he called “Antedeluvian Tea” that he said would definitely prolong life.
    Unfortunately for Springer the federal government caught up with him and successfully challenged his mining claims. He was charged with squatting on federal land and in 1974 he and his followers were evicted. He was later arrested and convicted of false advertising.
    In 1976, the Bureau of Land Management allowed a consortium of California State Universities to take over the management of the property and its facilities. Today, scientists and students who study desert fauna and flora, and people who attend special classes and workshops use the facility.
    The first time I went to Zzyzx, it was for a photography workshop. As I bumped along the dirt road, I asked myself, “What in the world am I getting into, it’s the bloody Sahara out here.” I was tempted to turn back, but I persevered and I’m glad I did. As soon as I saw the pond and the buildings I started to change my mind. And after the first day, I fall in love with the place. It’s a special world, that beautiful little oasis with palm trees, with its spring, with comfortable funky buildings and with the sun and the wind providing electricity. For a brief moment the world’s problems simply don’t matter. Springer’s elixir was not in his dubious concoctions, but in Zzyzx itself.