The waters at Soda Springs have sustained people of many cultures for thousands of years. Nomadic Chemehuevi people and the agrarian Mohave Indians visited these springs during hunting, gathering, and trading trips through the area, and their travels created an Indian trade route across the desert. In 1776, Father Francisco Garces, guided by Mohave Indian traders, became the first European to enter this area. By the 1860s, the Indian footpath had become a wagon road for freight and passenger service between San Bernardino, California, and Prescott, Arizona. Travel on the Mojave Road was recorded in several colorful accounts, including mixed reviews of the palatability of the water at Soda Springs. By the early 1900s, Soda Springs had grown to include the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, an evaporative salt works, and a small religious colony. The Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Resort opened in the mid-1940s and remained in operation until 1974; today the former resort houses California State University Desert Studies Center. On November 15, 1853, Lieutenant Robert S. Williamson of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers became the first person to describe this oasis, writing that at the base of the hills, on the edge of the salt lake, were several fine springs, slightly brackish, but not unpalatable.