Zzyzx Rises Above Its Shady, Colorful Past

Each day thousands of motorists are bemused and perplexed by the Zzyzx turnoff signs on Interstate 15, the busy Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas highway.

What does it mean? How do you say it?

It’s pronounced Zeye-Zix.

The turnoff is a 4 1/2-mile dirt road leading to the former headquarters of the late super-squatter Curtis Howe Springer, one of the Mojave Desert’s most colorful characters.

In 1944, Springer settled in this remote spot 200 miles northeast of Los Angeles and claimed ownership of 12,800 acres of desert--land that belonged to Uncle Sam--a parcel 8 miles long, 3 miles wide.

He erected a 60-room hotel, a church, a health spa with mineral baths in the shape of a cross, a castle, a radio station and several other buildings.

Zyport was his private airstrip. Boulevard of Dreams was the divided parkway leading to his oasis on Lake Tuendae, which contained a tiny endangered fish called the Mojave chub.

Springer, the self-styled “last of the old-time medicine men,” made up the name “Zzyzx,” explaining that it was the last word in the English language.

He identified himself as a physician and a Methodist minister. He was neither. For 30 years, he broadcast a daily religious and health program from his radio studio here that was carried by 221 stations in the United States and 102 stations in foreign countries.

On the air, Springer played religious music and preached folksy religious philosophy. He urged listeners to send donations for miraculous cures for minor ailments and maladies as serious as cancer.

He claimed he could restore hair and rejuvenate body cells. His magic potions--concoctions of celery, carrot and parsley juice--were shipped to all 50 states and overseas.

The money rolled in.

Retirees from many parts of the nation gave Springer their life savings for the privilege of staying in spartan quarters at the ranch.

Springer’s illegal enterprises thrived from 1944 until 1974 when federal marshals finally arrested him for alleged violations of food and drug laws and unauthorized use of federal land.

Zzyzx and all the improvements erected by Springer were confiscated by the Bureau of Land Management. The old “medicine man” was found guilty and spent several months in jail. He died in Las Vegas four years ago at the age of 90.

Since 1976, Zzyzx--Springer’s old oasis and resort on the shores of dry Soda Lake, 11 miles south of Baker--has functioned as the California State University system’s Desert Studies Center, a teaching and research station.

The university system has free use of the land and facilities under a 25-year cooperative management agreement with the BLM.

Scientists from the system’s 20 campuses and other educational institutions come to the Desert Studies Center to do research.

NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists, for example, are conducting satellite imagery studies at Zzyzx.

Cal State Los Angeles professor emeritus Donald Lowrie has been coming here off and on for the past three years to study desert spiders. Geologists from Cal State Fresno and Cal State Bakersfield make it their base while researching Mojave Desert earthquake faults.

The research and teaching center can house as many as 80 persons at once. University classes make field trips here.

Every weekend from October through May, special desert-related extension courses convene at Zzyzx, administered by Cal State San Bernardino, the closest of the state campuses.

Each session is devoted to a particular topic. From Nov. 16-18, for example, Claude Warren, chairman of the anthropology department for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his anthropologist wife, Elizabeth, will conduct a 20-hour course about historical camp sites along the Old Spanish Trail.

Upward of 3,000 scientists, researchers, students and members of the public use the Desert Studies Center each year.