Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, in the Antelope Valley of the western Mojave Desert in Southern California. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 156,633, and in 2020 the population was estimated at 173,516, making Lancaster the 153rd largest city in the United States and the 30th largest in California. Lancaster is part of a twin city complex with its southern neighbor Palmdale, and together they are the principal cities within the Antelope Valley region.
Palmdale is a city in northern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. The city lies in the Antelope Valley region of Southern California. The San Gabriel Mountains separate Palmdale from the Los Angeles Basin to the south.
The Mojave Desert is a xeric desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in southeastern California and southwestern Nevada, with small portions extending into Arizona and Utah.
The Antelope Valley Indian Museum State Historic Park is a state historic park of California, United States, interpreting Native American cultures of the Great Basin and surrounding regions. The park and its grounds are situated on the Antelope Valley's rural east side in northern Los Angeles County, California.
The Los Angeles Aqueduct system, comprising the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, is a water conveyance system, built and operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The Owens Valley aqueduct was designed and built by the city's water department, at the time named The Bureau of Los Angeles Aqueduct, under the supervision of the department's Chief Engineer William Mulholland. The system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles, California.
Arthur B. Ripley Desert Woodland State Park is a state park in the western Antelope Valley in Southern California. The park protects mature stands of Joshua trees and California juniper trees in their western Mojave Desert habitat.
The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and the San Gabriel Mountains. The valley was named for the pronghorns that roamed there until they were all but eliminated in the 1880s, mostly by hunting, or resettled in other areas. The principal cities in the Antelope Valley are Palmdale and Lancaster.
State Route 14 is a north–south state highway in the U.S. state of California that connects Los Angeles to the northern Mojave Desert. The southern portion of the highway is signed as the Antelope Valley Freeway. The route connects Interstate 5 on the border of the city of Santa Clarita to the north and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Granada Hills and Sylmar to the south, with U.S. Route 395 (US 395) near Inyokern. Legislatively, the route extends south of I-5 to SR 1 in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles; however, the portion south of the junction with I-5 has not been constructed. The southern part of the constructed route is a busy commuter freeway serving and connecting the cities of Santa Clarita, Palmdale, and Lancaster to the rest of the Greater Los Angeles area. The northern portion, from Vincent to US 395, is legislatively named the Aerospace Highway, as the highway serves Edwards Air Force Base, once one of the primary landing strips for NASA's Space Shuttle. This section is rural, following the line between the hot Mojave desert and the forming Sierra Nevada mountain range. Most of SR 14 is loosely paralleled by a main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, used for the Antelope Valley Line of the Metrolink commuter rail system as well as a connection between Los Angeles and the Central Valley via Tehachapi Pass.
The Tehachapi Mountains are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States. The range extends for approximately 40 miles (64 km) in southern Kern County and northwestern Los Angeles County and form part of the boundary between the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert.
The Colorado River Aqueduct, or CRA, is a 242 mi (389 km) water conveyance in Southern California in the United States, operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). The aqueduct impounds water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border, west across the Mojave and Colorado deserts to the east side of the Santa Ana Mountains. It is one of the primary sources of drinking water for Southern California.
Neenach is an agricultural settlement in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, with a population of about 800. It is facing a massive change with the proposed construction of a 23,000-home planned community to its north called Centennial.
The Antelope Valley Line is a commuter rail line that serves the Northern Los Angeles County area as part of the Metrolink system. The northern segment of the line is rural in character because it travels through the sparsely populated Soledad Canyon between Santa Clarita and Palmdale, serving the small community of Acton along the way. Other portions of its route parallel the former US Route 6, now San Fernando Road and Sierra Highway.
Saddleback Butte State Park is a state park in the Antelope Valley of the western Mojave Desert, in Southern California. It is located east of Lancaster, north of the community of Lake Los Angeles, and south of Edwards in the unincorporated community of Hi Vista.
The Midland Trail, also called the Roosevelt Midland Trail, was a national auto trail spanning the United States from Washington, D.C. west to Los Angeles, California and San Francisco, California. First road signed in 1913, it was one of the first, if not the first, marked transcontinental auto trails in America.
The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a mountain ridge in the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Located in northwest Los Angeles County, the ridge is bordered on the north by the San Andreas fault and lies within and is surrounded by the Angeles National Forest.
Elizabeth Lake is a census-designated place (CDP) and unincorporated community on Elizabeth Lake (lake), in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,756.
High Desert is a vernacular region with non-discrete boundaries applying to areas of the western Mojave Desert in southern California. The "High Desert" region is an area that generally is situated between 2,000 feet (610 m) and 4,000 feet (1,200 m) in elevation, and located just north of the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and Little San Bernardino Mountains.
Hi Vista is an unincorporated community in northeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. The historical name of Hi Vista was Long Buttes. Hi Vista is sometimes confused with Lancaster because both communities use the same ZIP code of 93535.
The Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 (AVSR1) is a 230 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power plant near Lancaster within Antelope Valley, in the western Mojave Desert, Southern California. It uses cadmium telluride modules made by the US thin-film manufacturer First Solar. The project was developed by First Solar and later bought by Exelon Corporation in 2011. The solar facility was fully commissioned in April 2014.
