Commissioned in 1926 and soon dubbed "The Mother Road," Route 66 linked Chicago and Los Angeles as a highway of hope that led thousands of people to new lives, and this site was one of its original rest stops, with four covered picnic tables in the 1950's. This stretch was one of the road's toughest, with searing summer temperatures averaging 100° and little water, and crossing the Mojave Desert could take two days in the 1920's. During WWII, this area became part of the Desert Training Center/California-Arizona Maneuver Area, established in 1942 by General George S. Patton, Jr., and troop and tank movements passed through the desert here. Early alignments of Route 66 paralleled railroad tracks to avoid steep grades, and towns along the route that began as railroad water stops grew into communities with schoolhouses, depots, cafes, motorcourts, gas stations, campgrounds, and other services for travelers, though many later closed. The surrounding basin and mountains also preserve a much longer natural and human history, including ancient crystalline and sedimentary rocks, desert plants and animals such as creosote bush, bighorn sheep, and the threatened desert tortoise, a fossil record spanning more than 500 million years, evidence of Paleo-Indian populations 10,000-12,000 years ago, later ancestral Yuman and Southern Piute travel and trade routes, exploration recorded by Friar Francisco Garces in 1775-1776, survey expeditions between 1840 and 1860, and the railroad crossing completed in 1883 that still follows its original route.
