The idea for this run came about during another run I led. While traveling on the Bradshaw Trail, I was asked if we would stop at the "King’s Throne." Never having heard of it, we looked online (while on the trail) and found a reference, with location coordinates, and a Google Earth view. It turns out we were within sight of it. The King’s Throne was a low hilltop location used by General George Patton during desert warfare training during World War II. He would observe his soldiers on maneuvers, and shout orders over the radio. There is a road that leads to the top of the hill, and some other artifacts nearby. On that day, we could not find a way to access the hill from where we were. The Throne is near the site of the 2014 Desert Rendezvous.
On the return toward home, we stopped at the Patton Museum in Chiriaco Summit to see if we could find more info on the Desert Training Center. The best books were out of print, but I got the reference info. Over the course of a year and a half, I was in contact with the publisher to get a copy of the two volumes, and finally was able to purchase them.
The books were technical books on the various sites throughout the Southern California and Arizona deserts, and whether there was sufficient historical context remaining to warrant adding these sites to the national register of historic places. These sites included divisional camps, airfields, maneuver areas, shooting, artillary, and bombing ranges, and other sites used in the training.
After reading the books, and becoming interested in visiting some of the sites, I thought that others might be interested in the little known history of the area during the war.
The Desert Training Center was established by General George S. Patton Jr. in early 1942, after if became clear that the United States would need to fight a large scale war in the deserts of northern Africa against the experienced German Afrika Corps. The facility was to be used, not only for training troops, but also for developing tactical doctrine and techniques, as well as testing equipment and developing new items. The original DTC consisted of the Mojave Desert from east of Indio to the Colorado River, and from near Searchlight Nevada, to Yuma, Arizona.
The first camp, which became the DTC headquarters, was Camp Young, near the present Patton Museum. This camp would be the template for all future divisional camps. It was laid out in a grid, roughly three miles long by one mile wide. Each camp was meant to house an armored or support division (roughly 16,000 men and their equipment). There would eventually be twelve such camps. There were few permanent structures: the men lived in various types of tents. Water was supplied by the Colorado River Aquaduct, and men, equipment, vehicles and supplies were brought in by rail.
On the weekend of November 16th and 17th, 2013, a group of explorers, consisting of 20 vehicles, and 30 people left from the meeting location in Salton City. We caravanned up Highway 86 to Mecca, and through Box Canyon to Interstate 10, heading east. After about five miles, we exited at Red Cloud Mine Road. Traveling southeast on the graded Red Cloud Mine Road, for a mile or so, we turned south on Gas Line Road.
Our first stop was the King’s Throne. We detoured off the Gas Line Road, and followed a faint track south that led straight to the base of the hill. The throne is perhaps 100 feet above the surrounding desert, which doesn’t seem like much, until you stand on top and take in the view for miles in all directions. The sloping valley is known as the Chuckwalla Bench, and is surrounded by the Chuckwalla, the Orocopia, and the Chocolate Mountain ranges. The throne has a road cut by bulldozer that spirals to the top, and a small area to turn around. Several of us climbed the road and took in the expansive view. A cross shaped antenna mast surrounded by stones, and some guy wires are all the artifacts that remain, aside from the road. It was easy to visualize dozens of tanks maneuvering in the broad plain, throwing up clouds of dust as they rumbled across the desert.
Heading back to I-10, we continued east to the exit for the near-ghost town of Desert Center. Desert Center was created by "Desert Steve" Ragsdale in 1921, when he bought a homestead and well, and created a service station on the old Chuckwalla road. At that time, the road was two ruts across 90 miles of cross-washes and blow sand. Four years later, when the state took over the road and decided to re-route it a mile and a half south, Ragsdale moved his home and his station. Over the years traffic picked up and the business grew to include a café, rental cabins, and a grocery store. Ragsdale was a former preacher from Missouri who hated liquor, gambling, and wild women. None of those vices were permitted in his town, in all the years he lived there.
Now the "town" is mostly deserted, but the post office and a store are still open. The other buildings still stand, but are closed. The café, looks like it could open any day, and the faded sign that says closed for remodeling has been there for years.
There are full salt and pepper and sugar shakers still on the tables, and the phone booths in the back are made of wood. The Chevron pumps are still at the gas station next door, mostly intact, and the price shows 39.9 cents per gallon. The area around the buildings contain old vehicles and farm equipment, including a caboose from the Kaiser Steel Eagle Mountain Railroad, and several trucks and tractors of unknown early vintage. Desert Center was part of the Desert Training Center, as there was a nearby airfield, and, despite the restrictions against vice, was a place for soldiers on leave to get supplies.
After poking around, we continued northeast on Highway 177 toward Palen Valley. Where the highway turns to a more northerly direction, around the end of the Coxcomb Mountains, Camp Coxcomb was located. The members of E. Clampus Vitus have built concrete monuments with bronze plaques to mark the locations of many of the Divisional Camps from the Desert Training Center, and to inform the traveler of the local history. Within the last two years, thieves have stolen the plaques from at least three of the monuments along this highway. Opposite a marker for the camp, the sandy Palen Pass Road heads east. We turned here and paused to air down our tires, as much of the rest of the trip would be on rough and sandy roads.
As we headed east, we began to see signs of the military use of the area. Tank tracks cris-cross the plain, and are still visible, as the light colored soil underneath shows through the disturbed dark brown desert pavement. The area in and around Palen Pass was used extensively for maneuvers during training. Troops would create defensive positions, and then tankers and supporting troops would attack these positions. The training was meant to be as real as possible, and live ammunition was often used. Units would head out from the camps and live and maneuver in the desert for weeks at a time. The vast area of the training center allowed the army to create a simulated theater of operations.
As we neared the pass, the trail got rougher and rockier. We stopped in the pass at a series of stone buildings at the base of a hill, to break for lunch.
This is known as Patton’s Cabin, but another building miles away also has that name, and no evidence exists that Patton spent time at either one. These buildings are simply stone walled rooms with a door in each, built against the carved out hillside. There are no roofs. They may have been covered in canvas. It is interesting to walk around the area, and speculate what their purpose was, and what was done here to train for war over 70 years ago.
Through the pass, we entered a wide valley surrounded by the Palen, McCoy, and Little Maria Mountains. The road heads generally southeast toward the northern end of the McCoys. Large numbers of tank tracks are visible near the road, and the turn and head off in all directions. The tankers were required to travel overland, and not use existing roads.
In one place, coils of barbed wire were strung across the road for some purpose. With the exception of the road itself, the wire is still there, extending for some distance. The undisturbed coils rusting in the weather have stained the sandy soil underneath a rusty brown.
On the left side of the trail, the Little Maria Mountains are scarred with tank tracks. These tracks head straight up the base of the mountain, then abruptly stop. This is repeated over and over, like the drivers were testing to see how far up the steep slopes they could go. Then they backed down.
At the north end of the McCoy Mountains, we found a fortified defensive area. This consisted of a series of slit trenches, very shallow, that wound in a twisting pattern, and were connected to several foxholes. Strands of barbed wire were attached to steel anchors in the ground. Some soldiers expended a lot of effort to dig these trenches in the hard packed soil. These ruins are visible on Google Earth satellite photos.
As the daylight was fading, we decided to camp nearby, near the Black Jack Mine. Several members of the group left us at that point to head for home. The rest of us setup camp, cooked our dinner, and shared stories and dessert around the campfire, before turning in.
Shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday, we packed up and left camp, heading east on the trail, toward Midland Road. Turning north, we passed the abandoned company town of Midland. This town was created to serve the gypsum mines in the Little Maria Mountains to the west. All that remains are broken concrete slabs that are used as parking places for seasonal travelers.
After Midland, the road rises to a pass, before entering Rice Valley to the north. The road is well maintained, and we increased our pace to cover more ground. About 15 miles north, the road ends at Highway 62, near the town of Rice. Rice is little more than a burned down gas station and the ruins of several stone houses and the intersection of three branches of the AT&SF railroad. We stopped here to photograph the graffiti covered debris, and to air our tires up for highway driving.
We turned eastward for a mile or two, to what remains of Camp Rice, right next to the highway. We drove into the camp and traveled on the faint camp roads, looking for artifacts that remain from the days when thousands lived, and worked here. These camp roads are visible in satellite photos and still show on some modern maps, like the Delorme Atlas. When the camps were abandoned after the war, the few structures were dismantled and everything was hauled away. Some trash, and many stone-lined walkways and roads still exist to show how the camps were laid out in a grid. Near the center of every camp, a circular road defines the headquarters area.
Back on Highway 62, we headed back west to the Iron Mountains. Next stop was Camp Iron Mountain about 15 miles away. This camp lies on the north side of the highway, and is the best preserved of the camps in this area, and has the most to see. It is next to the Iron Mountain pumping station of the Colorado River Aquaduct. Camp Granite lies just across the highway on the south side.
The monument plaques on the highway for all of these camps have been stolen by vandals, probably to salvage the metal. That means that anyone that may stop has no idea that millions of soldiers trained here during WWII.
We drove into the camp on the center access road, which dead ends at a fence. This camp has a barbed wire fence surrounding a large portion of the main part of the camp. This keeps vehicles from tracking through, but is open to foot traffic, which means that more walking is involved. We turned right and drove the road outside the perimeter fence to the back side, with closer access to one of the major attractions: The relief map.
The relief map was a scale model of the entire Desert Training Center, measuring 200 by 175 feet, and built by the Army Corps of Engineers. There was an elevated walkway for the entire length, now gone, and small wooden signs that marked the topographic features, such as camps, mountain ranges, and highways. Much of the map has melted back into the sandy desert, but some features remain, and comparing to old photographs, one can visualize what it looked like. The map is surrounded by a fence to prevent access, and has a berm around it on the uphill side to prevent further erosion. We stopped here for lunch, and to explore the surrounding area, taking in the rock-lined pathways and some unit insignia laid out on the ground in stones.
After lunch, we continued along the fence line to the south end of the camp. Here is another major artifact. An outdoor chapel and altar were constructed by the soldiers out of stone, for religious services. This structure still stands, and looks much as it did seventy years ago. It looks as if it has been preserved and maintained. There is another chapel somewhere at this camp, but I have not been able to locate it over several visits.
We got back on the highway, heading west to the junction with Highway 177 south, back toward Desert Center. We then traveled west on Interstate 10 to Chiriaco Summit. Our last stop on the trip was the Patton Museum. This museusm has an extensive collection of artifacts from the Desert Training Center, WWII, and General George Patton. It is well worth the several hours of time needed to take it all in. Admission is $5.00, and includes many displays of equipments, weapons, and an outdoor yard with a selection armored tanks, and other vehicles.
Our group broke up at this point, with some heading for home, and others staying to explore the museum. We all headed our own way home, as the group had come from various parts of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties. The run was blessed with perfect warm weather, clear skies, and a great group of people brought together by their common interest in the history of, and love for, the desert.
On the return toward home, we stopped at the Patton Museum in Chiriaco Summit to see if we could find more info on the Desert Training Center. The best books were out of print, but I got the reference info. Over the course of a year and a half, I was in contact with the publisher to get a copy of the two volumes, and finally was able to purchase them.
The books were technical books on the various sites throughout the Southern California and Arizona deserts, and whether there was sufficient historical context remaining to warrant adding these sites to the national register of historic places. These sites included divisional camps, airfields, maneuver areas, shooting, artillary, and bombing ranges, and other sites used in the training.
After reading the books, and becoming interested in visiting some of the sites, I thought that others might be interested in the little known history of the area during the war.
The Desert Training Center was established by General George S. Patton Jr. in early 1942, after if became clear that the United States would need to fight a large scale war in the deserts of northern Africa against the experienced German Afrika Corps. The facility was to be used, not only for training troops, but also for developing tactical doctrine and techniques, as well as testing equipment and developing new items. The original DTC consisted of the Mojave Desert from east of Indio to the Colorado River, and from near Searchlight Nevada, to Yuma, Arizona.
The first camp, which became the DTC headquarters, was Camp Young, near the present Patton Museum. This camp would be the template for all future divisional camps. It was laid out in a grid, roughly three miles long by one mile wide. Each camp was meant to house an armored or support division (roughly 16,000 men and their equipment). There would eventually be twelve such camps. There were few permanent structures: the men lived in various types of tents. Water was supplied by the Colorado River Aquaduct, and men, equipment, vehicles and supplies were brought in by rail.
On the weekend of November 16th and 17th, 2013, a group of explorers, consisting of 20 vehicles, and 30 people left from the meeting location in Salton City. We caravanned up Highway 86 to Mecca, and through Box Canyon to Interstate 10, heading east. After about five miles, we exited at Red Cloud Mine Road. Traveling southeast on the graded Red Cloud Mine Road, for a mile or so, we turned south on Gas Line Road.
Our first stop was the King’s Throne. We detoured off the Gas Line Road, and followed a faint track south that led straight to the base of the hill. The throne is perhaps 100 feet above the surrounding desert, which doesn’t seem like much, until you stand on top and take in the view for miles in all directions. The sloping valley is known as the Chuckwalla Bench, and is surrounded by the Chuckwalla, the Orocopia, and the Chocolate Mountain ranges. The throne has a road cut by bulldozer that spirals to the top, and a small area to turn around. Several of us climbed the road and took in the expansive view. A cross shaped antenna mast surrounded by stones, and some guy wires are all the artifacts that remain, aside from the road. It was easy to visualize dozens of tanks maneuvering in the broad plain, throwing up clouds of dust as they rumbled across the desert.
Heading back to I-10, we continued east to the exit for the near-ghost town of Desert Center. Desert Center was created by "Desert Steve" Ragsdale in 1921, when he bought a homestead and well, and created a service station on the old Chuckwalla road. At that time, the road was two ruts across 90 miles of cross-washes and blow sand. Four years later, when the state took over the road and decided to re-route it a mile and a half south, Ragsdale moved his home and his station. Over the years traffic picked up and the business grew to include a café, rental cabins, and a grocery store. Ragsdale was a former preacher from Missouri who hated liquor, gambling, and wild women. None of those vices were permitted in his town, in all the years he lived there.
Now the "town" is mostly deserted, but the post office and a store are still open. The other buildings still stand, but are closed. The café, looks like it could open any day, and the faded sign that says closed for remodeling has been there for years.
There are full salt and pepper and sugar shakers still on the tables, and the phone booths in the back are made of wood. The Chevron pumps are still at the gas station next door, mostly intact, and the price shows 39.9 cents per gallon. The area around the buildings contain old vehicles and farm equipment, including a caboose from the Kaiser Steel Eagle Mountain Railroad, and several trucks and tractors of unknown early vintage. Desert Center was part of the Desert Training Center, as there was a nearby airfield, and, despite the restrictions against vice, was a place for soldiers on leave to get supplies.
After poking around, we continued northeast on Highway 177 toward Palen Valley. Where the highway turns to a more northerly direction, around the end of the Coxcomb Mountains, Camp Coxcomb was located. The members of E. Clampus Vitus have built concrete monuments with bronze plaques to mark the locations of many of the Divisional Camps from the Desert Training Center, and to inform the traveler of the local history. Within the last two years, thieves have stolen the plaques from at least three of the monuments along this highway. Opposite a marker for the camp, the sandy Palen Pass Road heads east. We turned here and paused to air down our tires, as much of the rest of the trip would be on rough and sandy roads.
As we headed east, we began to see signs of the military use of the area. Tank tracks cris-cross the plain, and are still visible, as the light colored soil underneath shows through the disturbed dark brown desert pavement. The area in and around Palen Pass was used extensively for maneuvers during training. Troops would create defensive positions, and then tankers and supporting troops would attack these positions. The training was meant to be as real as possible, and live ammunition was often used. Units would head out from the camps and live and maneuver in the desert for weeks at a time. The vast area of the training center allowed the army to create a simulated theater of operations.
As we neared the pass, the trail got rougher and rockier. We stopped in the pass at a series of stone buildings at the base of a hill, to break for lunch.
This is known as Patton’s Cabin, but another building miles away also has that name, and no evidence exists that Patton spent time at either one. These buildings are simply stone walled rooms with a door in each, built against the carved out hillside. There are no roofs. They may have been covered in canvas. It is interesting to walk around the area, and speculate what their purpose was, and what was done here to train for war over 70 years ago.
Through the pass, we entered a wide valley surrounded by the Palen, McCoy, and Little Maria Mountains. The road heads generally southeast toward the northern end of the McCoys. Large numbers of tank tracks are visible near the road, and the turn and head off in all directions. The tankers were required to travel overland, and not use existing roads.
In one place, coils of barbed wire were strung across the road for some purpose. With the exception of the road itself, the wire is still there, extending for some distance. The undisturbed coils rusting in the weather have stained the sandy soil underneath a rusty brown.
On the left side of the trail, the Little Maria Mountains are scarred with tank tracks. These tracks head straight up the base of the mountain, then abruptly stop. This is repeated over and over, like the drivers were testing to see how far up the steep slopes they could go. Then they backed down.
At the north end of the McCoy Mountains, we found a fortified defensive area. This consisted of a series of slit trenches, very shallow, that wound in a twisting pattern, and were connected to several foxholes. Strands of barbed wire were attached to steel anchors in the ground. Some soldiers expended a lot of effort to dig these trenches in the hard packed soil. These ruins are visible on Google Earth satellite photos.
As the daylight was fading, we decided to camp nearby, near the Black Jack Mine. Several members of the group left us at that point to head for home. The rest of us setup camp, cooked our dinner, and shared stories and dessert around the campfire, before turning in.
Shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday, we packed up and left camp, heading east on the trail, toward Midland Road. Turning north, we passed the abandoned company town of Midland. This town was created to serve the gypsum mines in the Little Maria Mountains to the west. All that remains are broken concrete slabs that are used as parking places for seasonal travelers.
After Midland, the road rises to a pass, before entering Rice Valley to the north. The road is well maintained, and we increased our pace to cover more ground. About 15 miles north, the road ends at Highway 62, near the town of Rice. Rice is little more than a burned down gas station and the ruins of several stone houses and the intersection of three branches of the AT&SF railroad. We stopped here to photograph the graffiti covered debris, and to air our tires up for highway driving.
We turned eastward for a mile or two, to what remains of Camp Rice, right next to the highway. We drove into the camp and traveled on the faint camp roads, looking for artifacts that remain from the days when thousands lived, and worked here. These camp roads are visible in satellite photos and still show on some modern maps, like the Delorme Atlas. When the camps were abandoned after the war, the few structures were dismantled and everything was hauled away. Some trash, and many stone-lined walkways and roads still exist to show how the camps were laid out in a grid. Near the center of every camp, a circular road defines the headquarters area.
Back on Highway 62, we headed back west to the Iron Mountains. Next stop was Camp Iron Mountain about 15 miles away. This camp lies on the north side of the highway, and is the best preserved of the camps in this area, and has the most to see. It is next to the Iron Mountain pumping station of the Colorado River Aquaduct. Camp Granite lies just across the highway on the south side.
The monument plaques on the highway for all of these camps have been stolen by vandals, probably to salvage the metal. That means that anyone that may stop has no idea that millions of soldiers trained here during WWII.
We drove into the camp on the center access road, which dead ends at a fence. This camp has a barbed wire fence surrounding a large portion of the main part of the camp. This keeps vehicles from tracking through, but is open to foot traffic, which means that more walking is involved. We turned right and drove the road outside the perimeter fence to the back side, with closer access to one of the major attractions: The relief map.
The relief map was a scale model of the entire Desert Training Center, measuring 200 by 175 feet, and built by the Army Corps of Engineers. There was an elevated walkway for the entire length, now gone, and small wooden signs that marked the topographic features, such as camps, mountain ranges, and highways. Much of the map has melted back into the sandy desert, but some features remain, and comparing to old photographs, one can visualize what it looked like. The map is surrounded by a fence to prevent access, and has a berm around it on the uphill side to prevent further erosion. We stopped here for lunch, and to explore the surrounding area, taking in the rock-lined pathways and some unit insignia laid out on the ground in stones.
After lunch, we continued along the fence line to the south end of the camp. Here is another major artifact. An outdoor chapel and altar were constructed by the soldiers out of stone, for religious services. This structure still stands, and looks much as it did seventy years ago. It looks as if it has been preserved and maintained. There is another chapel somewhere at this camp, but I have not been able to locate it over several visits.
We got back on the highway, heading west to the junction with Highway 177 south, back toward Desert Center. We then traveled west on Interstate 10 to Chiriaco Summit. Our last stop on the trip was the Patton Museum. This museusm has an extensive collection of artifacts from the Desert Training Center, WWII, and General George Patton. It is well worth the several hours of time needed to take it all in. Admission is $5.00, and includes many displays of equipments, weapons, and an outdoor yard with a selection armored tanks, and other vehicles.
Our group broke up at this point, with some heading for home, and others staying to explore the museum. We all headed our own way home, as the group had come from various parts of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego Counties. The run was blessed with perfect warm weather, clear skies, and a great group of people brought together by their common interest in the history of, and love for, the desert.
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