Bonanza Spring, in the foothills of the Clipper Mountains in California’s Mojave Desert, is the desert’s largest aquifer-fed freshwater spring system and creates a rare wetland in an otherwise arid landscape. Its waters stretch about half a mile, forming the largest wetlands in a 1,000-square-mile area and supporting mesquite, cottonwood, cattails, fish, frogs, and toads. The spring also once supplied water by pipeline to the Santa Fe Railroad stop at Danby for steam engines. In recent years, it has become a focus of controversy over the proposed Cadiz Water Project, with concerns that groundwater extraction could harm this ecologically and culturally important spring.

Needles, California · USA