The Mojave Road

The 'Aha Makhav, the Mojave, moved goods across this desert on footpaths long before anyone thought to draw them. The army widened one into a military wagon road in 1859, and for a quarter of a century it carried the freight, the mail and the soldiers between Los Angeles and everything east of the Colorado. Then the railway crossed the desert in 1885 and made the whole thing pointless inside a year. It is a rough four-wheel-drive track today, which is nearer to what it always was.

What the plaque says

Long ago, Mohave Indians used a network of pathways to cross the Mojave Desert. In 1826, American trapper Jedediah Smith used their paths and became the first non-Indian to reach the California coast overland from mid-America. The paths were worked into a military wagon road in 1859. This "Mojave Road" remained a major link between Los Angeles and points east until a railway crossed the desert in 1883.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Calico Ghost Town — 23 mi
  An 1881 silver boomtown in the calico-colored hills, saved and rebuilt by the founder of Knott's Berry Farm.

More markers nearby

• Camp Cady (on the Mojave Road) — 9.4 mi
• Town of Calico — 23 mi
• Possum Trot — 25 mi