River of Memory : Historian Tells Tales of Mojave Waterway

Clifford J. Walker is a historian and an expert on a river many think is a myth--the 150-mile Mojave River, one of the longest and largest underground rivers in the world.

“A lot of people don’t believe there is a Mojave River. They see the dry bed not realizing that beneath it flows a wide, wide river,” said Walker, 60, who teaches a course on the history of the Mojave Desert at Barstow Community College.

He wrote the 352-page book “Back Door to California: The Story of the Mojave River Trail,” published in 1986 by the Mojave River Valley Museum Assn. It tells the story of the river and its importance from prehistoric time to the turn of the 20th Century.

Walker is head of the association that owns and operates the Mojave River Valley Museum in Barstow. He has been teaching English and history at Barstow High School for 35 years.

East of town, Walker looked across the dry river bed where it is a mile wide with 20-foot-high walls of sand on each bank.

“During the floods of 1938 this was full of cascading water, shoreline to shoreline. Downstream in Baker, people were rescued in rowboats. This happens during years of heavy rains in what most people think of as the bone-dry Mojave Desert. Sounds incredible, doesn’t it?” said Walker.

The river’s headwaters are in the San Bernardino Mountains near Cajon Pass. It ends at the Mojave Sink or Soda Dry Lake at Baker. During the Ice Age, it continued on into Death Valley.

“Down through the centuries the river was a prime source of water for Indians. The river runs above ground in a few places. In past years, it surfaced in many more places than it does today. It flowed above ground for a short distance in Barstow until a few years ago,” said Walker.

Indian campsites are still evident along the river, where Indian paintings and carvings can be seen on nearby rock outcroppings.

At Oro Grande, footprints of a group of adults and children walking across the muddy banks of the Mojave were frozen in time when covered with lava. Scientists have dated the footprints to be 5,120 years old, reported Walker in his book.

Walker leads museum and classroom field trips to historic places along the river. Near Yermo, he shows the site where the skeleton of a headless horseman collapsed on the remains of a horse was found in 1965.

“A battle between horse thieves and ranchers happened at that location in the 1840s. It’s believed the remains were of a young man killed in the skirmish. But why his head is missing is a mystery,” said the historian.

Not far from where the headless horseman was uncovered are ruts made by hundreds of wagons crossing the desert on the old Mojave River Trail along the dry riverbed. The trail was used by wagon trains from 1848 until the late 1800s.

“Jefferson Hunt was the first to use wagons on an old mule trail that spanned the desert. He led 100 wagons from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, then across the Mojave Desert to Southern California, charging $10 a wagon for his services,” said Walker.

Remains of prehistoric animals have been found all along the shores of the Mojave River: saber-toothed cats, mammoths, wolves, sloths, four kinds of camels and two kinds of horses--one the size of a fox terrier, said Walker.

“It doesn’t look like much on the surface, but the Mojave River is a very exciting river that played a key role in settling Southern California,” he said.

“During Prohibition, several bootleggers had stills tapping the crystal clear underground waters of the Mojave River, distilling their illegal products in this out-of-the-way place for sale in the Los Angeles area.”

Walker’s next book will be the story of Prohibition in California.