Vern’s Stories: Muroc - The Little, Desert Town that Disappeared Off of the Face of the Earth

Muroc was a sleepy little town on the west side of the Rogers dry lake. The town proper consisted of a one room school with one teacher, a Shell filling station that carried some groceries, a general store that had a little of everything, including a gas pump, a railroad station and telegraph office, a large diesel pumping station with a large storage tank, an automotive repair garage, a dairy down the track aways, a boarding house, post office, a railroad section house that housed about 6 families, about 10 residences with about 63 souls and another I00 in the environs around the dry lake. This varied some up and down. When there was activity on the lake such as testing cars, airplanes, etc., the population might increase considerably. Muroc was located on the AT&SF railroad. The main line of the Santa Fe ran between Richmond, Calif. (near San Francisco) and Chicago, Illinois. Many huge locomotives, 3800 class, pulled long strings of freight cars. Some trains were a mile long traveling the railroad both east and west. Because Muroc was blessed with well water that was almost pure it was ideal for the locomotive's boilers so the Santa Fe had a pumping and water loading facility there where they loaded tank cars with water at Muroc and shipped them throughout the vast desert route of the Santa Fe to fill the hungry boilers of their locomotives.

The name Muroc is Corum spelled backwards. Early tradition has it that one of the early settlers in the area was named Corum. He was so well liked and respected that the citizens wanted to name the town after him. However, he was so modest that he did not want them to name the town after him so they hit on an idea to spell his name backwards and call it Muroc. He excepted that idea.

Muroc in the late 20's and early 30's (the middle of the great depression) was peopled by honest, hard working, self-reliant, innovative types with initiative and skills of all kinds. Being far from doctors and hospitals, these people had their own home remedies to keep them alive and functioning. My father had kidney trouble. There was a plant that grew on the desert called squaw tea. When put in a pot and boiled, it made a tea that made Dad feel much better. If you had the old rumitz or sore muscles skunk oil was just the thing. Sheep tallow applied to the hand repaired chapped hands. Some homesteaders used mustard plasters for chest colds, some preferred coaloil and lard with a wool sock wrapped around the neck. Turpentine and caster oil were standard in most homesteads. Creosote was good to kill the seven year itch, but left you smelling like a telephone pole. Fat bacon and bread mixed with milk would bring a boil to a head. If you were bitten by a rattle snake, you could kill a chicken and put the hot entrails on it. If you had a sore throat, gargling with hot salt water was in order. Salt or baking soda for brushing the teeth worked well and so the list went on and on, every home having it's favorite remedies; some outlandish, some very practical for that place and time.

These people were drawn to the desert for various reasons; health, getting away from the rat race, etc., but one of the chief reasons was cheap land and plentiful water. The homestead acts were still in force at this time and a U.S. citizen of age who could find a quarter section (1/2 mile square, 160 acres) not already taken could file on it, build some kind of abode, live on it for 3 years and get a clear title to the land.

Most settlers around the Muroc area were not blessed with an over abundance of this worlds goods. There were a few, however, that were quite well off. Most settlers in the area would start a homestead with some kind of a shelter. Life was fairly simple around Muroc at this place and time. There were no electric lines, no telephones, no gas lines, no paved roads, no public transportation, no mail delivery, no school buses; you hauled your own kids to school. You were paid so much for each kid. As I remember about 17 cents per kid, per day in our case (I think it was on a mileage basis, we were 5 miles from Muroc school). There were 5 of us kids so Mom & Dad got about $17.00 a month, which in those depression days was quite a bit of denaro, it would put lots of beans on the table. Our teacher was Miss Gladys Campbell, 24 years old ( a real good looker) who taught all 8 grades in a one room school. As I recall there were around 40 students in all 8 grades. I think most of the older boys thought they were in love with Miss Campbell, but she kept order and everyone in line with her ruler. She also would grab boys by the hair and give them a good whack. Most of us boys did not mind too much as we were getting some attention from such a good looking young lady. However, I remember one of the younger boys who had not reached the age of caring much for the opposite sex, Raymond Williams. After a hair pull, He came to school the next day with his hair cut down to only 1/2 inch all over his head.

Most homesteaders would start out with a place to live, then dig a well. Many places around Muroc were only 15 to 20 feet to water, in many cases you could dig a well with a post hole auger by adding extensions to the stem. They would then put in a pitcher pump. Still later maybe get a windmill. In time, a tower and tank would be added. With room additions and bottled propane gas for cook stove and heating, they would end up with quite a mansion, by desert standards. Before this came about, they graduated from kerosene wick lamps with glass chimneys to Coleman lamps that burned white gas and had silk asbestos mantels that gave a very good bright light. If the light started to dim down, you would reach over and give the tank a few pumps of air pressure. In homes without electricity, kerosene refrigerators were very popular. They worked on the principle of the heat from the burner compressed the refrigerant, instead of a mechanical compressor. The last graduation in this department was to get an electric light plant. In the cooking and heating department, most started out with a wood cook stove. It usually heated the house while the house was small. As the house grew, a heating stove would be added to the parlor. In the early days the fuel for these stoves came from several sources. If you lived near the railroad, there was usually old ties for the asking. In some areas, there were what the natives called petrified wood. It came from the Joshua tree. In its growing state it has a fibrous trunk like a palm tree, but after they die and fall over the ground, chemicals or something turns them into a red hard wood that burns a lot like coal. On the desert side hills, especially on the east side of the dry lake, you could pick up a truck load in a little while. As time went on wood got scarce and oil became popular for heating. It was 3 cents a gallon in those days, and provided a lot of warmth for the money.

With no telephones in the area, the only fast way of communicating was by telegram, which was handled at the local railroad station. If someone needed to get word to you from anywhere in the country in a hurry, they sent you a telegram. If you needed to get word to someone in a hurry, you went to the depot and composed your message. Telegrams were expensive and there was a special rate for 10 words or less, so you usually kept your message to ten words if possible. Sometimes when you received a telegram, you kind of had to read between the lines to figure it out.

The Depot was visited for several other reasons also. As I recall there were 2 passenger trains a day in each direction, so if you wanted to go to Bakersfield, you took a train going west. If you wanted to go to L.A., you had a choice, you could take a train going west and transfer at Mojave to the Southern Pacific, or go east and transfer to a train going south at Barstow. We also went to the depot for freight too large for parcel post. If we ordered a windmill or Jack pump from Sears and Sawbuck or Monkey Ward (as the natives affectionately called them) it came in a box car and was switched off on the siding at Muroc. We had a windmill over our well and also a jack pump which was made from old car parts. The homesteaders were very adept at taking old cars that had outlived their usefulness on the road, tearing them to pieces and making all kinds of useful things for the homestead with them. We used our jack pump when there was a long windless spell, which was not too often on the desert. We had a 10,000 gallon water storage tank that was connected to the house by 2" pipe. Our well was dug by hand with a pick and shovel. All the dirt was pulled out in a bucket on a rope and hand windlass. The well was about 4 1/2 feet round and about 35 feet deep. Dad and we 3 boys took turns digging and pulling up the buckets of dirt. Many of the wells on the desert were dug in this way.

Many families around the lake area raised some poultry chickens for eggs and meat, also turkeys and livestock. We always raised about fifty or more turkeys and chickens every year. We came to Muroc to stay in 1930. Daddy brought 4 heifers and one cow. When the government moved him out in 1939, he had over 100 head of cattle.

The Rogers dry lake (most people called it Muroc dry lake then) was in the center of the Muroc area. The dry lake had a powerful effect on everyone, it was our super highway; no cops! You could go a hundred miles an hour if you had a car that would go that fast. I think a book could be written about all the things that have happened there in past years. Many people have gotten lost on the lake at night. In those days there was no electricity so there were no lights anywhere. It all looked alike at night and people when lost tend to go in circles. Two men working at Britton's Rotary Mud had to work over time one night, so they had to drive after dark. They lived at the south end of the lake. They started out and drove 22 miles and never saw land (what the natives call the edge of the lake). All at once land showed up in their head lights. There was a sign on a post so the passenger got out to see what it said. It said speed limit 100 miles an hour. The man recognized the sign. He went back to the driver and said "do you know where we are?" The driver said "no", the passenger told him "we are within 2 hundred yards of where we started". They decided to spend the night at the camp. There were lots of tales like that. A man named Griggs lived on the east side of the lake, about five miles from Muroc. He left town a little too late and had to drive across in the dark. He drove for several hours, never finding his road, and was running low on gas, so he decided to park for the night. He bundled up the best he could as he was in an open truck and it was winter. He almost froze that night. The next morning his own roosters woke him up, he was that close to home! Driving across the lake, you might see almost anything on any given day - like a man hitting a golf ball, then jumping in his car and chasing it down, or a man in a car pulling a glider overhead. You might see someone in a sail mobile sailing noiselessly along without burning up any expensive gas. Some would take an old car chassis and install a mast and sail, some built special chassis with one axle that was IO or 12 feet wide wi1h a single tiller wheel in the back However made, they would really move out in a good wind.

You might wonder what people did for entertainment way out in the middle of nowhere. People in Muroc had a way of entertaining themselves. It was a much slower life than in the city and people seem to have time to stop and visit at the store or post office and spin a yarn or two, or maybe stop at the depot, watch a train go by and talk for awhile. Sometime there was a box social at the school in the evening or a dance. The ladies of the community had a club. They would meet in different homes and tried to have an interesting speaker when they met. Sometimes it was Pancho Barnes, who wore men's clothes (almost unheard of in those days) and smoked big smelly cigars. She would tell of her experiences flying around the USA and Mexico. There was no church in Muroc in the early years. But later, a very fine preacher named Lowell Griggs, a layman who worked all week in L.A. would come up to Muroc on the weekends. He got there any way he could, sometimes a friend brought him up, if he had the money sometimes he would come on the train, sometimes he even hitch hiked. The church met at the school house and had a very nice congregation. Later on they met at North Muroc. Speaking of entertainment, it seems there was almost always something going on at the lake. I am told even Lindbergh landed on the lake in the "Spirit of St. Louis". It was after he had made his flight to Paris when he was flying around the country with his plane, making appearances in many big cities. He was due in L.A. at a certain time and he was renown for his promptness. He would leave in time from his starting point so he had plenty of time, then he would stop before he got to his destination long enough so that he arrived right on the dot. He had stopped in Muroc to kill a little time, much to the delight of Arline Anderson, who got to talk to him. Another famous aviator that landed at Muroc was Wiley Post. It was not as happy an occasion as Lindy's, it was an emergency landing. This was an age when everybody was trying to beat everyone else's record. Wiley held his share of records in his Lockheed Vega monoplane the famous "Winnie Mae", but he had a plan to get the jump on the competition on a record breaking flight from L.A. to New York. This was before the day of real high altitude flying and before the days when many planes had retractable landing gears. He reasoned if he could get enough altitude by supercharging his engine enough to get oxygen enough to deliver the horsepower he needed, he could fly much faster in the ratified air. As an added bonus, he devised a way to drop his landing gear after takeoff to cut down drag. It was a clever idea, ahead of its time, and would probably give him another record for his trophy case, if he had not developed engine trouble over Arizona. He picked Muroc as the best place to land and with his high altitude he was able to glide back to the dry lake and land. He had one problem though, he was wearing an early make of an oxygen helmet made out of aluminum that looked more like something a deep sea diver would wear than what an aviator would wear. It bolted to a shoulder pad with wing nuts and he could not get out of the thing without help. It was a hot summer day on the lake and he landed near Mr: Mertz, who was out sailing his sail mobile that day. Wiley jumped out of the plane and motioned for Mr. Mertz to come and get him out of the thing on his head before he suffocated. I do not know if this is true or not, but it makes a good story. It was reported that Mr. Mertz, seeing the odd head gear thought it was an alien being from another planet and started off in a hurry. After much gesturing by Wiley, he finally decided he was friendly and came back to help him out of his headgear. As I was saying earlier, it seemed like there was always some kind of entertainment going on on the lake. There was testing of cars, motorcycles and airplanes. One dude brought a motorcycle he had built with a Plymouth car engine in it to try and break the motorcycle speed record. I can not remember if he broke it or not. Caddy tested their 16 cylinder car at Muroc. Auburn tested cars on the lake for years and held many records. There was a 5 mile and a 10 mile track marked out on the lake. Sometimes they would put light pots all the way around the track and run 24 hour tests at high speeds. Race cars were sometimes tested on the tracks. Ralph Depalma was one I remember testing race cars at Muroc. I remember a funny thing that happened near the 10 mile circle. A young man from the city and his mother drove out to the Muroc dry lake to look around. While his mother was at Anderson's store looking over the wares, the young man took their new Buick out on the lake to drive around and try the car out for speed, etc. Tiring of that he got playful. He fixed the steering so it would make a circle on the lake. He sat back and watched the car go around at slow speed with nobody in it. After awhile he decided to speed the action up a little, so he jumped on the running board (cars had them in those days). He reached in through the open window and pulled the hand throttle out some more and jumped off. The car picked up more speed than he had anticipated and was now humming around the circle at a fast clip. The young man tried to jump back on, but alas the car was just going too fast. Everytime he tried, he fell on his face. What to do? They had just filled the car with gas, so it was not going to run out of gas for a long time. Other people came along and offered to help by driving along side and try to transfer over to the driverless car, but it was too risky at the speed it was going and the arc it was making. To try and transfer over might get someone hurt or killed. Other things were tried. Someone suggested getting a cowboy to rope the bumper but nothing seemed to work. By now it was starting to get dark and the car had no lights turned on. It was on a well traveled part of the lake and a car without lights or a driver posed a real danger to life and limb. Someone hit on the idea of going up to Anderson's store and getting the light pots they used on the car track and light them and set them around on the outside of where the car was running. This done, they sat back to wait though the long night. All at once they realized the car was not coming around anymore! They could hear it humming around in the dark, but no one knew where it was or where it was going. There was a mad scramble to get off the lake and 1et the car have it. The car was found the next morning. It had finally run out of gas up on land behind Anderson's store.

Another event that happened yearly in the 30's was the roadster races. All the hot rod clubs in Southern California got together for this one. A one mile speed trap was set on the lake and all the young mechanics and older ones too would run their hopped up Ford's and Chevy's and what have you to find out who had the fastest rod. It was something to see a model T Ford with Raja head, special magnetos, twin Winfield carbs and a few more goodies tooling along at over one hundred miles per hour. It was pure madness all over the lake, as cars whizzed by in every direction, no one controlling traffic. I never heard a count of the number of people attending, but it would number in the thousands. There were motorcycle races at other times on the big circular tracks. I remember Harley Davidsons, Indians, Hendersons and Excelsior’s racing for prizes and glory.

Well the younger generation was starting to grow up now. In 1932 I was seventeen and as Daddy was not very well and not able to work too much, I went to work at V.E. Brittons. I drove a Fordson tractor, scraping up the lake crust, which was shipped all over the country by railroad cars. It was used in oil well drilling. Soon after going to work there, the name was changed to Mojave Rotary Mud Co. After working there for 9 months, demand for rotary mud slacked off and in 1933, I went to work for the Pacific Coast Borax Co. where I worked for 17 years.

The Army Air Corp. started coming to the Muroc area in the early 30’s for field training. They would Bivouac along the edge of the lake and fly their P12 and P36's(an early Boeing pursuit ship.) Some of the pilots were quite playful and had fun chasing coyotes or buzzing a car on the road. Coming from the rear over the car at high speed, just a foot or two above the car. Many of the cars in those days were topless touring cars, or roadsters and the noise was terrific. The unsuspecting driver would be terrified and end up in the ditch. As far as I know no one was ever hurt in this way, just badly shaken. As time went on the Air Corp established a small permanent base across on the east side of the lake. Rurnors now began to circulate around the community that the Air Corp was going to take over the whole dad blamed country. Twenty miles in all directions. People began to wonder why us, with thousands of square miles of desert, why can't they pick some uninhabited area to establish a base? Of course the answer was the Army Air Corp had their eye on our wonderful large dry lake. People of the area loved it here for many reasons. Outside of the town itself, the population  was scattered out over a wide area. Most people were a mile or more from their nearest neighbor. Crime against people was practically kill, although laws were broken from time to time. In those prohibition days. The whole desert area was popular for bootleggers because of its remoteness. The bootleggers were particularly fond of the dry lake area because they could build their underground stills in the sand dunes along the lake. Their roads off of the lake were well hidden and they would move locations often. The operations were directed by the big bosses in the big cities and the people on the desert never knew them or saw them. The manpower that operated the stills was a breed to themselves. They were from the big cities and were hardly seen or known by the local population as they stayed always inside their underground caverns and never mingled with the local population. One of the reasons the settlers liked to live here was because Big Brother seemed far away and did not seem interested in running their lives and telling them every move they could make. Taxes were very cheap in this remote part of Kern County. There were no zoning laws, no building codes enforced, no one to tell you where to put your well or how to grade your property. Everybody did their own thing, built their houses the way they wanted them. There were no inspectors standing over them telling them what they could or could not do. They did whatever they wanted to on their own property. No worry about being bashed in by criminals. They enjoyed their neighbors, helped each other and enjoyed a freedom that is unknown today.

The government was now starting to move in, starting the process of Imminent Domain. There was a meeting at the school to see what could be done. Of course, there was not anything that could be done, when the government wants something. The government brought in appraisers from the Bakersfield area who were use to the lush, green valley area and considered the dry desert land practically worthless, then too, some of the buildings were quite unconventional by their standards. So, the people of the area saw their land and their years of hard work priced out very cheap. Many took it to court and did get more, but of course, the lawyer got part of that. For the most part, I think people were unhappy with the outcome. There were probably some who did not care and maybe some who were ready to move on anyway. Whatever the case, it was all over and the government notified everyone in 1939 to “pack you bags and go”!

Edwards Air Base had become a reality. The base operated for a few years after everyone was moved out of the surrounding area with the railroad still running through the middle of the base and with the town proper still in tact. Eventually the railroad was routed north of the base along Highway 58 and the town was completely destroyed. Today it’s almost impossible to figure out where the town or railroad was on the base.

Note: Please click the link below for a PDF of the original document which includes a hand-drawn map of the Muroc area.

Muroc - The Little, Desert Town that Disappeared Off of the Face of the Earth