page_title: Mojave Desert
section_title: Cities and regions
hierarchical_section_title: Mojave Desert / Cities and regions
caption_attribution_description: English: The end of civil twilight, and the beginning of nautical twilight
context_page_description: The Mojave Desert is an arid rain-shadow desert and the driest desert in North America. It is in the Southwestern United States, primarily within southeastern California and southern Nevada, and it occupies 47,877 sq mi. Small areas also extend into Utah and Arizona. Its boundaries are generally noted by the presence of Joshua trees, which are native only to the Mojave Desert and are considered an indicator species, and it is believed to support an additional 1,750 to 2,000 species of plants. The central part of the desert is sparsely populated, while its peripheries support large communities such as Las Vegas, Barstow, Lancaster, Palmdale, Victorville, and St. George.
  The Mojave Desert is bordered by the Great Basin Desert to its north and the Sonoran Desert to its south and east. Topographical boundaries include the Tehachapi Mountains and the Sierra Pelona Ridge to the west, the Sierra Nevada and the Inyo Mountains to the northwest, and the San Gabriel Mountains and San Bernardino Mountains to the south. The mountain boundaries are distinct because they are outlined by the two largest faults in California – the San Andreas and Garlock faults.
context_section_description: While the Mojave Desert itself is sparsely populated, it has increasingly become urbanized in recent years. The metropolitan areas include Las Vegas, the largest city in the Mojave with a metropolitan population of around 2.3 million in 2015; St. George is the northeastern-most metropolitan area in the Mojave, and is located at the convergence of the Mojave, Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. Lancaster is the largest California city in the desert; over 850,000 people live in areas of the Mojave attached to the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, including Palmdale and Lancaster (referred to as the Antelope Valley), Victorville, Apple Valley and Hesperia (referred to as the Victor Valley) attached to the Inland Empire metropolitan area, the 14th largest in the nation.
  Smaller cities or micropolitan areas in the Mojave Desert include Helendale, Lake Havasu City,
  Kingman, Laughlin, Bullhead City and Pahrump. All have experienced rapid population growth since 1990.
  Notable cities and towns with fewer than 30,000 people in the Mojave include Barstow, Boron, 
  California City, Helendale, Joshua Tree, Landers, Lone Pine, Lucerne Valley, Mojave, Needles, Nipton, Pioneertown, Randsburg, Ridgecrest, Rosamond, Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley in California; Mesquite and Moapa Valley in Nevada; and Hurricane in Utah.
  The California portion of the desert also contains Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, noted for experimental aviation and weapons projects, and the largest Marine Corps base in the world at Twentynine Palms. The US Army also maintains Fort Irwin & the National Training Center (NTC) which is another major training area for the United States military. Mojave airport is also home to a long-term storage facility for large airplanes due to extremely dry non-corrosive weather conditions and a hard ground ideal for parking aircraft. The airport also houses the Air and Space Port and was one of the test centres for the Virgin Galactic Fleet.
  The Mojave Desert has several ghost towns; the most significant are the gold-mining town of Oatman, Arizona, the silver-mining town of Calico, California, and the old railroad depot of Kelso. Some of the other ghost towns are more modern, created when U.S. Route 66 (and the lesser-known U.S. Route 91) were abandoned in favor of the Interstates. The Mojave Desert is crossed by major highways Interstate 15, Interstate 40, U.S. Route 95, U.S. Route 395, California State Route 58, California State Route 14, California State Route 138 and California State Route 18
  Other than the Colorado River on the eastern half of the Mojave, few long streams cross the desert. The Mojave River is an important source of water for the southern parts of the desert. The Amargosa River flows from the Great Basin Desert south to near Beatty, Nevada, then underground through Ash Meadows before returning to the surface near Shoshone, California, disappearing underground again a short while later and has its final outlet into the southern end of Death Valley. The riverbed passes under SR 127 near Dumont Dunes before turning north into Death Valley National Park.
  The Mojave Desert is also home to the Devils Playground, about 40 miles (64 km) of dunes and salt flats going in a northwest-southeasterly direction. The Devils Playground is a part of the Mojave National Preserve and is between the town of Baker, California and Providence Mountains. The Cronese Mountains are within the Devils Playground.
caption: A Mojave desert nautical twilight, in Johnson Valley, California
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