Mohave or Mojave are a Native American people indigenous to the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert. The Fort Mojave Indian Reservation includes territory within the borders of California, Arizona, and Nevada. The Colorado River Indian Reservation includes parts of California and Arizona and is shared by members of the Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo peoples.
Blythe is a city in eastern Riverside County, California, United States. It is in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River, approximately 224 miles (360 km) east of Los Angeles and 150 miles (240 km) west of Phoenix. Blythe was named after Thomas Henry Blythe, a San Francisco financier, who established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the region in 1877. The city was incorporated on July 21, 1916. The population was 18,317 at the 2020 census.
The Nazca lines are a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created between 500 BC and 500 AD by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving different-colored dirt exposed. There are two major phases of the Nazca lines, Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BC, and Nazca phase, from 200 BC to 500 AD. In the years leading up to 2020, between 80 and 100 new figures had been found with the use of drones, and archaeologists believe that there are more to be found.
The Mojave River is an intermittent river in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains and the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Most of its flow is underground, while its surface channels remain dry most of the time, except for the headwaters and several bedrock gorges in the lower reaches.
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs, estimated to be 20,000 years old are classified as protected monuments and have been added to the tentative list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Petroglyphs are found worldwide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek prefix petro-, from πέτρα petra meaning "stone", and γλύφω glýphō meaning "carve", and was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe.
In archaeology, rock art is human-made markings placed on natural surfaces, typically vertical stone surfaces. A high proportion of surviving historic and prehistoric rock art is found in caves or partly enclosed rock shelters; this type also may be called cave art or parietal art. A global phenomenon, rock art is found in many culturally diverse regions of the world. It has been produced in many contexts throughout human history. In terms of technique, the four main groups are:
A geoglyph is a large design or motif – generally longer than 4 metres (13 ft) – produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignment of materials on the ground in a manner akin to petroforms, while a negative geoglyph is formed by removing part of the natural ground surface to create differently coloured or textured ground in a manner akin to petroglyphs.
The Old Spanish Trail is a historical trade route that connected the northern New Mexico settlements of Santa Fe, New Mexico with those of Los Angeles, California and southern California. Approximately 700 mi (1,100 km) long, the trail ran through areas of high mountains, arid deserts, and deep canyons. It is considered one of the most arduous of all trade routes ever established in the United States. Explored, in part, by Spanish explorers as early as the late 16th century, the trail was extensively used by traders with pack trains from about 1830 until the mid-1850s. The area was part of Mexico from Mexican independence in 1821 to the Mexican Cession to the United States in 1848.
Coso Hot Springs is a hot spring complex in the Coso Volcanic Field in the Mojave Desert of Inyo County, California. The Springs are on the National Register of Historic Places.
State Route 177 is a state highway in the U.S. state of California in Riverside County. The route runs along Rice Road, linking Interstate 10 (I-10) midway between the Coachella Valley and Blythe on the California–Arizona border, to SR 62 near Rice. SR 177 travels along the eastern portion of the Joshua Tree National Park; like the eastern 100 miles (160 km) of SR 62, it passes through some of the most desolate areas of the Mojave Desert.
Chiriaco Summit is a small unincorporated community and travel stop located along Interstate 10 in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. It lies 19 miles (31 km) west of Desert Center on the divide between the Chuckwalla Valley and the Salton Sea basin at an elevation of 1,706 feet (520 m).
Patayan is a group of prehistoric and contemporary Native American cultures residing in parts of modern-day Arizona, west to Lake Cahuilla in California, and in Baja California. This cultural grouping also included areas along the Gila River, Colorado River and Lower Colorado River Valley, the nearby uplands, and up north toward the vicinity of the Grand Canyon. Evidence shows that Patayan lifeways have persisted from AD 700 to the 1900’s.
Lake Mojave is an ancient former lake fed by the Mojave River that, through the Holocene, occupied the Silver Lake and Soda Lake basins in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California. Its outlet may have ultimately emptied into the Colorado River north of Blythe.
Mastamho, sometimes also referred to as Mustamho, is the creator deity of the first Mohave people along the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert and Colorado Desert. Mastamho is the grandson of the Earth Mother and the Sky father.
The Palo Verde Valley is located in the Lower Colorado River Valley, next to the eastern border of Southern California with Arizona, United States. It is located on the Colorado Desert within the Sonoran Desert south of the Parker Valley. Most of the valley is in Riverside County, with the southern remainder in Imperial County. La Paz County borders to the east on the Colorado River.
The Colorado River is a major river of the western United States and northwest Mexico in North America. Its headwaters are in the Rocky Mountains where La Poudre Pass Lake is its source. Located in north central Colorado it flows southwest through the Colorado Plateau country of western Colorado, southeastern Utah and northwestern Arizona where it flows through the Grand Canyon. It turns south near Las Vegas, Nevada, forming the Arizona–Nevada border in Lake Mead and the Arizona–California border a few miles below Davis Dam between Laughlin, Nevada and Needles, California before entering Mexico in the Colorado Desert. Most of its waters are diverted into the Imperial Valley of Southern California. In Mexico its course forms the boundary between Sonora and Baja California before entering the Gulf of California. This article describes most of the major features along the river.
The Genesis Solar Energy Project is a concentrated solar power station located in the Mojave Desert on 1,920 acres (780 ha) of Bureau of Land Management land, in eastern Riverside County, California. The plant is owned/managed by Genesis Solar, LLC, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC. The Genesis Solar Energy Project is located about 25 miles (40 km) west of Blythe, in the Lower Colorado River Valley. The plant was built in the Colorado Desert along an ancient trade route that native people had traveled for thousands of years. The route traversed the Sonoran Desert and enabled trade between the Colorado River and the coast.
Aiken's Wash is an archaeologically and geologically significant wash located in the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, California. The wash includes several pictograph and petroglyph sites dating from the late pre-Columbian period. The proximity of pictographs and petroglyphs is unusual in the Mojave Desert region. The area was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Aiken's Wash National Register District. The district comprises 1,450 acres (590 ha), including all major archaeological sites in the wash.
Topock Maze is an archaeological site located south of Interstate 40 near Needles, California. The site consists of numerous rows and groups of parallel lines; while hypothesized to be a geoglyph, the purpose, age, and creators of the lines are disputed. A 1908 report by Edward M. Curtis suggested that the site was built as some sort of maze or labyrinth, inspiring its name; however, later research has concluded that this was not the site's purpose. A 1978 study by Arda M. Haenszel proposed that the lines were prehistoric and had some sort of religious or ceremonial significance to the native Mojave people; this conclusion was supported by a 2005 study. Archaeologist Ruth Arlene Musser-Lopez published a study in 2011 which concluded that the lines were created recently, likely by gravel scraping operations during railroad construction in the 1880s; however, they were built over a preexisting prehistoric art site.
