The Great American Yucca Famine?

On our little field trip back from Arizona this week, Wifey and I came across one of the oddest memorials to California's less-than-glorious history of suburban development.

Outside of 29 Palms in the high desert lies a long stretch of road leading to the now mostly abandoned town of Amboy. Scattered amidst the desert landscape are hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more small cubical shacks (I hesitate to call them homes) mostly abandoned to decades of sun, sand, and vandalism. Here and there, one might show signs of life - a power line still hooked up, a truck or car parked outside - but by and large these huts stare out on the desert expanse with windows vacant of glass, showing no signs that anyone had spent much time in them, ever. The region carries the slightly ironic name of "Wonder Valley".

The Wife was fascinated. "What are they, homesteads?"

I told her I seemed to recall something to that effect.

It reminded her, she said, of our visit to Ireland, where the country roadsides are scattered with the remnants of cottages abandoned during the great potato famine of the 19th century.

"It must have been a yucca famine!" We both had a good laugh.

Tonight, I decided to find out more about Wonder Valley and see if I could jog my memory of why all these forlorn little houses are scattered everywhere... so Googling I went.

It seems I did have it right; they were homesteads. Back in 1938 Congress passed the "Small Tract Act" citing a demand from First World War vets seeking cheap land to retire to. Apparently, all you had to do was sign up, put up a permanent structure, and eventually Uncle Sam handed you a deed to five acres of sagebrush. You didn't even need power or water. Just a little shack.

After WWII, there was a rush of interest in was to be one of the last, if not the last, opportunities for the average American to get free land from their federal government. Speculators in the 1950's found out that a quick buck could be earned, and the Feds were swamped with applications. Demand, thanks to the bureaucratic log jam, exceeded supply. Local government, meanwhile, was eager to get these little parcels on the tax roles - there was money to be made for them, too.

It all came crashing down about 1960 when the Feds and the state and local government simplified the homestead requirements by eliminating the structure requirement, and offering the land itself at market value. The speculation ended overnight. The act that created all this was itself repealed in the mid-1970's. What land that wasn't bought up is now firmly back in the hands of the government.

Many of the little houses never saw an occupant. Others seemed to have been used, then boarded up and forgotten. Yet some people, as tough as the desert they lived in, seemed to stick it out and thrive despite the heat and remoteness. And, even more surprisingly, others have come to join them.

Today, Wonder Valley is a burgeoning artist's colony and even has its own music festival. The characters who live there, from what I've gathered on the Internet, remind me of some desert version of the TV show "Northern Exposure," odd, likable, and somehow wired differently from the rest of us slogging back and forth mindlessly on the freeway each day. Good for them.

I'm just a little disappointed there wasn't a yucca famine, after all.