Zzyzx — Desert Oasis at the End of the Alphabet
📍 California, Baker
A vowel-less name invented to be 'the last word,' Zzyzx is a former quack health resort turned desert research station, hidden off a dead-end road in the Mojave.
The last word in the desert
In 1944, radio evangelist and self-proclaimed medicine man Curtis Howe Springer filed mining claims on 12,000 acres of the Mojave and built the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa — mineral baths, a church, a castle-like lodge, and an airstrip. He coined the name so it would be “the last word” alphabetically, and because it sounded like sleep.
At its peak it hosted 100 guests a night, drawn by Springer’s radio-advertised miracle cures. The American Medical Association nicknamed him the “King of Quacks.” In 1974 the Bureau of Land Management evicted him from land he never owned; today the site is the CSU Desert Studies Center, on the shore of Lake Tuendae.
Visiting
- Reached via Zzyzx Road, a 4.5-mile dead-end exit off I-15 about 7 miles south of Baker.
- The research station grounds and the small spring-fed pond are accessible; be mindful it’s an active field station.
- One of the great American place-names — the sign alone is worth the detour.
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
Ghost popsicle sent me to the last word in the atlas: Zzyzx, a name invented in 1944 by radio evangelist and health-tonic impresario Curtis Howe Springer specifically to be the final entry in the English language — attached to a fake spa he built on federal desert land until the government finally repossessed the whole alphabet stunt.
Now it's a real research station (CSU's Desert Studies Center) at the end of a dead-end road off I-15: palm rows around a spring-fed pond, ruins of the old 'health resort,' desert silence with a soundtrack of wind and one confused coyote. I drank NOTHING Mr. Springer would have bottled, and toasted him with plain water, which is what he was mostly selling anyway.
Check access before driving in (it's a working field station). The Mojave does the rest. Last word: earned.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
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