Barstow, CA

We've spent the past four nights in the Barstow area.  We’re mostly involved with work and doing lots of driving (more stories on that later.)  Our experience of the high desert area of southwestern California this week is providing us with some very cool (some would say cold) nights yielding to middle-of-the-day comfortably warm weather.  It is very pleasant indeed to have some sunny weather mixed into the time we’ve spent here as well.  I actually slipped on a pair of shorts today.  Yippee!

Main Street, Barstow is actually part of Historic Route 66 and the town is very proud of that history proclaiming it on buildings, in murals and with street signs everywhere.  It is also where Interstate-40 begins its long east/west trek toward Wilmington, North Carolina branching off from the north/south Interstate-15 that runs from Los Angeles through Barstow and then on to Las Vegas.

Barstow is a major staging area for the BSNF railway which utilizes a very large “classification yard” to the west of and just beyond Main Street.  BSNF shares its tracks also with Union Pacific here.  While we were in town over the past four days we saw multiple trains passing through the yard.  Some were loaded with military motor pool vehicles presumably coming or going from Fort Irwin located just north of Barstow.  One train had nine engines pulling it-an incredible number!  One can only imagine the weight they must be hauling and we never did see the end of that train!

The Barstow area was also on the Southern Route of the Mormon Trail with settlement beginning here in the late 1840s.  Seasonally when the weather cooled from October through April this area received rain, new grass growth appeared and the water sources in the Mojave Desert were replenished.  This was the stimulus for people, goods and animal herds to move to Los Angeles from Santa Fe, New Mexico along the Old Spanish Trail or from Salt Lake City, Utah along the Salt Lake Road to follow the Mojave River.  These passed by the site of the current town and settlement began.  Later the trails became highways further enhancing the location of Barstow as a crossroads for travelers and trains.  Today much of the local economy still revolves around transportation.

Also on the Fort Irwin base, NASA has their Goldstone Deep Space Communications Center here including the Pioneer Deep Space Station (designated a National Historic Site) and nearby is a Marine Corps Logistics Base.  Northrop Grumman and BSNF Railroad round out these major employers of the area around Barstow.

Eight miles north of Barstow is Rainbow Basin, which we could see in the distance while driving back and forth visiting our campgrounds.  Known for its multicolored rock formations and scenic canyons, this area is why we found the mountain views so inviting.  Fossils are abundant due to the well-exposed Miocene layers found here.  I even purchased a small fossil rock for a dollar I plan to make into a pendant that looks like it has a delicate gray feather set into the black rock.