When I was in California last month, I drove north from Palm Springs one day to explore a section of historic Route 66 and to visit the Mojave National Preserve. Along the way, I drove through a stretch of desert about 25 km long that was marked off in a grid of sand roads with structures spread out at somewhat regular intervals, some inhabited but many abandoned, windows boarded up, or reduced to a burned-out shell. Curious to know more, I investigated and discovered that this area was known as Wonder Valley.
Wonder Valley, in the easternmost part of San Bernardino County (east of Twentynine Palms and north of Joshua Tree National Park) is one of those expressions of eccentricity that seem to blossom in the deserts of California. It emerged in the 1940s and 50s after the U.S. government determined that the land was “useless” and began selling off 5 acre plots of land at $10 and $20 an acre to homesteaders who promised to “prove it up” by building a permanent structure on the property. What resulted was what the Los Angeles Times called “one of the strangest land rushes in Southern California history”; by the mid-1950s, the Bureau of Land Management was receiving 100 applications a day for free land. Many of the homesteaders arrived from Los Angeles, many working-class people seeking solitude and exhilarated by the prospect of actually owning real estate. Others were returning servicemen or Midwesterners looking for an escape from cold winters. Some spent every weekend for months building a small cabin on their claim with their own two hands; others simply purchased a prefab cabin from a local supplier. The environment was harsh, no doubt; but the settlers believed that with hard work and perseverance they could turn it into an oasis in the desert, make it their own piece of the American Dream.
The individuals who built and for a time occupied the cabin shown above most likely had a dream they thought would be fulfilled in Wonder Valley, but as Jacob Sowers (a geographer who wrote his dissertation on Wonder Valley) says, “with every dream there’s an illusion”, and then there’s “the nightmare of reality.” Within a few years, the majority of the homesteaders had abandoned their tracts because they just couldn’t make it. As another writer says, “Few could stand the scorching months of triple-digit heat or the icy winter chill, the snow and the flash floods, or the constant wind that blasts like a furnace in the summer and bites to the bone in the winter.” The majority of the tracts lacked a reliable or potable groundwater source; even electricity did not become readily available in the area until the late 1950s. For thousands, the dream that was born in Wonder Valley died under the fierce gaze of reality.
Dreams can change the world but they have a price.
We are all born with the capacity of dreaming, imagining a better future than the one we inhabit. Parents, friends, teachers, mentors have the opportunity (even responsibility) to encourage those dreams, help us fine-tune them so they have a better chance of surviving in the environment we live in that is so often inhospitable to dreamers. Dreams can change the world but they have a price. In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. laid his soul bare when he declared his dream: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”. Dr. King was murdered before he could see his dream fulfilled, and today it’s still a struggle for many blacks in the United States to believe that there is a realm of possibility beyond their present situation when the incarceration rate for African Americans is more than five times the rate of whites and the poverty rate is almost three times that of whites.
Gary Haugen, the founder and CEO of International Justice Mission (the organization I served until recently) is another man with a dream. At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. last week, he described a “historic opportunity for global good”—to be the “first generation that could actually see slavery end as a force in human affairs” (1:57 in the video above). Like Dr. King’s dream, this is not one that Mr. Haugen can will into realization on his own; it is one of those issues that requires us all to do our part. When 40 million or more people are still held in slavery today, this is a dream we can all agree needs to be fulfilled, regardless of the cost. (And Mr. Haugen knows something about the cost of a dream, when three of his colleagues were murdered in Kenya in 2016.) But honest, good and admirable dreams are not only about making a better world—they are about starting a family, preparing for a secure future in retirement, building a business, escaping from an abusive relationship.
The more we dream, the more we suffer; but better to dream and be disappointed than to never dream at all.
Some of those dreams come true, others are crushed in broad daylight or the darkness of night. Like the encroachment of the Mojave Desert on the homesteaders’ cabins in Wonder Valley, experience far too often seems to leave our dreams as empty, broken shells. And what then? Was the dream an illusion to begin with? Perhaps, but more often than not, disappointment is nothing less than a reminder that we are human. In his introduction to his translation of the book of Lamentations, the late Eugene Peterson wrote, “To be human is to suffer. No one gets an exemption.” People of faith believe that God gives dignity to our suffering by entering it and keeping us company throughout it, although the pain still sucks. The more we dream, the more we suffer; but better to dream and be disappointed than to never dream at all. Those who stop dreaming lose the power to choose their own future, and become what a hostile world wants them to become.
There are still some dreamers who see beauty and hope in Wonder Valley. After the homesteaders abandoned their claims, squatters took over many of the empty cabins. L.A’s poor and disadvantaged, looking for a cheap place to rent, occupied others; mental institutions even relocated patients to Wonder Valley. Wonder Valley was on its way to becoming a dystopia. But, after Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve were created in 1994, artists and writers began to move to the area for solitude and inspiration. Now, there’s an influx of new pioneers, and the artistic and creative community—as illustrated by the High Desert Test Sites collaborative—is starting to get international attention. Old homesteads are being converted into weekend getaways or rented out on AirBnB. In the words of one artist, “there’s inspiration for the taking” in the desert.
Dystopia or utopia, Wonder Valley is still a work in progress. Today 900 to 1000 artists, musicians, writers, retirees, drifters, squatters, mentally-ill, ex-cons and descendants of original homesteaders call the 90-square mile area home, each on what once was a homestead. One writer calls it “a chessboard grid of contrast and contradiction, a little nowhere in the Mojave reverberating with the hollow echo of the promise of America.” It’s complicated; dealing with the aftermath of the death of a dream is a messy process. But after a time of grieving, we will hear an invitation to dream again from the God of new beginnings. Be sure to respond to that invitation; if we hold on to disappointment, it will corrode our souls and crush our spirits. The new dream may be a different shape or size (or better suited to our best selves) than the one that has died, but we shouldn’t compare. What’s important is that new beginnings are possible.
I drove through heavy rain on my return trip from Mojave National Preserve, but by the time I reached Wonder Valley the sun had broken through the clouds. I was lucky enough to capture a photograph of a rainbow arcing over an abandoned cabin, encapsulating the paradox of the area and the tension between the dream that died and possibility of a new dream. We may never be able to shake the sense of loss associated with what has passed away, but in giving ourselves to the risk of a new beginning we invite the writing of the next chapter in the adventure called life. Even if it doesn’t change the world, welcoming a new dream will change our personal story.
All photos and text © 2019 Edwin Wilson
