His wife would run the cafe and do the cooking,” Lech said. “He would run the tow truck and pump gas. Opened in September 1921, Desert Center was a family affair. “That’s why he called it Desert Center: It was kind of a marketing ploy.” “He’d seen numerous people who had been unprepared crossing the desert, so he conceived of the idea of having a rest stop at the halfway point,” said Steve Lech, a historian and author who co-writes The Press-Enterprise’s Back in the Day local history column. The shell of a former school, caked in graffiti, with broken glass and ceramic tile covering the floor, is visible to freeway motorists zipping past Desert Center. High school students travel about 50 miles each way to attend classes in Blythe. The others shut down after Kaiser Steel’s nearby Eagle Mountain mine closed in 1983. The district operates just one of its former five schools. The Desert Center Unified School District teaches 29 students, according to the California Department of Education, ranging from kindergarten through 8th grade. The bureau estimates 216 people lived there in 2019, with a median age of 70.6 years old. Census Bureau lists it as a spot where people have come together, even though it’s not a formal town or city. The land Wraich bought includes two gas stations, a cafe, a hotel, store, school and the gravesite of a former cafe cook - all abandoned.ĭesert Center has no city council or other government. A 3,750-square foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom house literally on the beach in Dana Point.īut Desert Center is a largely empty desert outpost in the Chuckwalla Valley, about 50 miles from either Blythe or Indio, almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix.A 6,000-square foot, six-bedroom, seven-bathroom “retreat” in Malibu Canyon, on an 8-acre property.
A 3,200-square foot Palm Springs house, designed by architect Ray Kappe, with spectacular views of the city and surrounding mountains.Here’s what else $6 million can get you in today’s Southern California real estate market: