Word: deserting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...equipped and the unwary, the desert can still be a savage and treacherous foe. But to the man who comes to the desert with caution and respect, the forbidding area has much to offer: fabulous mineral riches, water so pure that it tastes like distilled water, incredibly fertile farmland and a growing season 365 days long. Above all, the desert offers the restless migrants from city stress a combination of peace, solitude and a fresh start on a new frontier. "There are three ways of life now," says Indio (Calif.) Publisher Ole Nordland. "The city, the farm and the desert...
Mass Migration. Ever since the Spaniards first explored the region in the 16th century, man has been able to promote a cautious friendship with the great deserts of the Southwest. Springs and river water from the Colorado, Mojave,* Verde, Salt and Gila gave rise to settlements and small farming districts. Deep wells supported a slowly growing population, clustered along well-traveled desert highways in a few centers-Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Barstow. In the mountains, miners hammered away at sun-baked mineral vaults, and on the sandy desert floor men learned to irrigate and raise truck crops, cotton, dates...
...within the past 15 years, so casually that the nation at large was scarcely aware of the change, man discovered how to live comfortably al most anywhere he chose on the desert. From the old centers, suburbs began mushrooming out through the mesquite and yuccas. Long fingers of civilization stretched along brand-new desert highways, reaching toward new cities that sprang up among the saguaros and Joshua trees...
...newcomers have moved into the Far West; 200,000 are still arriving in California each year. They flow into Los Angeles and the main cities of the Southwest and, in search of more space and freer living, push on through the populated centers and out over the desert...
Tucson is adding 1,000 to its population each month, Phoenix even more. Las Vegas' Clark County claims 80,000 permanent newcomers since 1940; Yuma, Ariz, more than 20,000. On California's Mojave Desert, population has soared 360% (from 32,000 to 147,000); one of its new cities, Ridgecrest, not even an entity in 1940, already counts 6,700 residents and is steadily climbing. The fertile Coachella Valley, north of California's Salton Sea, has doubled in population (from 16,000 to 32,000) since 1950, and Henderson, incorporated in 1953 twelve miles...