The Desert Research Station suffered a few broken
pipes this winter during the record low temperatures in the desert.
But other than that, all is well at the Center’s outpost in the
high desert, near Barstow. Work progresses on the Walking Trail
Testbed, a facility that is used for trying out new interpretive
methodologies on a walking trail-type system. Other periodic
and ongoing research programs at the DRS this year include a
number of native plant reintroductions, and continued support
of the Moisture Research Site, an instrumented irrigation and
moisture retention plot on the other side of the dry lake.
For the last year, the DRS has also been the base for sonic
boom research, undertaken by the Center’s Steve Rowell. The research
involves a continuous sampling of the skies for sonic booms,
a reasonably frequent occurrence, as the DRS is under Edwards
Air Force Base’s R-2515 High Altitude Supersonic Corridor air
space. A computer at the DRS, connected to a network of microphones,
records the outdoor sounds continuously, erasing all silence
shortly after recording it. When a sound above a certain threshold
is detected, the computer preserves it, as well as the moments
before and after it. The logged sonic incidents are later transferred
to an off site master where they are catalogued, stored, and
accessed for use in research and displays.
In the Landscape Information Center, the part of the building
that is open to the public, a new display about the Harper Lake
Basin was added to the existing displays about the remarkable
land uses of the Southern California Desert. Called Points of
Interest in the Harper Lake Basin: A Mojave Microcosm, the exhibit
looks at the region around the nearby dry lake, as a place representative
of the subtleties and extremes of contemporary human activity
in the desert.
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CLUI DRS Boron Tour
Last summer the CLUI conducted a public bus tour of the region
around the Desert Research Station, as we do periodically.
This time we focused on the town of Boron, one of the jewels
of the High Desert.
The tour bus left from outside the Center’s office in Culver
City, and headed east on Interstate 10, to the 15, up the Cajon
Pass, through Victorville to Route 58, all the while getting
speil from the tourguide (Matthew Coolidge) about the landscape
we were passing through, watching portions of videos about flood
control, the BLM, and cement.
We arrived at the Desert Research Station, where visitors looked
at the exhibits about the region, explored the new walking trail,
and ate lunch. Then it was off to the main attractions. First
stop was the Harper Lake Solar generating station, tucked away
at the end of a road across the dry lake from the Research Station.
This is the largest solar power plant in the world, in output,
and it was built on the ruins of the old ranching community of
Lockhart, and the site where Howard Hughes once had an aircraft
test site.
On to Kramer Junction, where the other “largest solar plant
in the world” is located (larger in area, but slightly smaller
in output than the Harper Lake plant), and up the 395 to the
ruins of the Boron Air Force Station/Federal Correctional Facility.
Back on Highway 58 west, we passed the point of the Great Boron
Fulcrum, where on one side is the largest open pit mine in California,
and on the other is Rocket Ridge, a mountain on Edwards Air Force
Base where rocket engines are strapped to concrete stands and
tested – one part digging down, and the other straining upward.
Boron, the town, is in the middle.
The group stopped in at the U.S. Borax mine, with its visitor
center atop a pile of rock, then headed into town. Instead of
covering as much ground as possible, as is typical on a CLUI
tour, we wanted people to have time to get to know Boron on their
own terms, and to explore the small grid of the village on foot.
We suggested the 20 Mule Team Museum and Aerospace Museum on
Boron’s Museum Row, where the bus parked, as a place to start.
Then we met up later for a grand and festive supper on the patio
of Domingo’s, the best Mexican food for at least 50 miles, and
the place where the owner likes to say that the reason the space
shuttle lands at the nearby Muroc Dry Lake sometimes, is so the
astronauts can eat at Domingo’s. Back to Los Angeles in the lurching,
swaying bus, watching a movie about a lurching, swaying bus.
The tour was sponsored by Afterall Journal, an arts quarterly,
co-published by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design,
London, and the School of Art at the California Institute of
the Arts, Los Angeles. |
