A crucifix-shaped swimming pool crumbles within the desert sun. Alongside it, five decrepit concrete baths once full of the promise of cleansing sins. Warm mineral water, tapped from what was said to be a holy underground river, drew desperate salvation searchers to this distant California wasteland. Today, a part of the pool sinks into the banks of the traditional lakebed upon which this strange settlement was built.
This place was once the 12,000-acre dream of notorious huckster and “super squatter” Curtis Springer. Springer claimed to be a health care provider, a minister, a professor and a miner — but turned out to be none of those things. Eventually, his wrongs caught up with him, forcing him to depart his tiny stolen empire in these desolate reaches of California.
This strange history, the 2 horror movies shot here and the place’s bizarre name first drew me to the Zzyzx Road turnoff on Interstate 15, around an hour east of Barstow. But notorious fraudster and creepy swimming pool aside, I discovered that the location at the tip of the 4-mile track is a natural phenomenon unique unto itself. A real oasis within the desert.
Around 3 miles in, the road turns to loose gravel because it bends around a rocky outcrop. Lined with palm trees, the unpaved track finally approaches the fabled cluster of buildings at its terminus.
I made my way down there on a transparent winter day. And not using a soul in sight, the place felt a world away from the highway that ferries 1000’s between Los Angeles and Las Vegas each day.
Essentially the most striking sight at Zzyzx is Lake Tuendae, a body of water the dimensions of a football field. Beyond, through the palm trees, the vast, ancient, crusty white lakebed reaches to the Devils Playground mountains.
“It’s a special place,” Dr. Terry McGlynn tells me. “There are scorpions at night, foxes, coyotes, rabbits and big-horned sheep wandering around. It’s absolutely stunning.”
McGlynn is the director on the California State University Desert Studies Center, which has occupied the storied settlement of Zzyzx, once named Soda Springs, for nearly 50 years. There, students and research scientists stay for weeks on end at the sting of Soda Dry Lake — a bright-white lakebed that was once Lake Mojave. Evidence shows that Indigenous people began populating the lakeshore around 10,000 years ago.
“It’s the terminal basin for the Mojave River, which runs west to east from the San Bernardino Mountains,” DSC operations manager and herpetologist (lizard expert) Jason Wallace tells me. “Which is kinda backwards for many river systems.”
While dry on the surface, the Mojave River remains to be lively underground, Wallace says. “It’s all the time a bit of moist, not too far under the lakebed.”
Visiting students’ work here today includes drilling into the rocks to find ancient climates, tracking sheep, conducting a reptile census and analyzing the hydrology of the traditional natural springs which have drawn people there for 1000’s of years.
“Geologists come from all around the world,” McGlynn says. “It offers a really unusual window into the history of time.”
Despite the customarily repeated myth that the location is an abandoned ghost town, Zzyzx is an lively field station, affiliated with California State University Fullerton, with around 60 beds for visiting students and research scientists.
“For some students from LA, that is the primary place they see the uninterrupted night sky. It’s spectacular,” McGlynn says. “Numerous people haven’t seen the Milky Way before.”
The gorgeous centerpiece to Zzyzx, Lake Tuendae, provides a house for mud hens, dragonflies and various migratory birds getting a drink on their long flight over the desert. It’s also one in all only three places where the protected and endangered Mohave tui chub fish could be found.
“You never see them. They sit on the underside of the lake,” McGlynn says. “Once every few years, a bunch of individuals monitor them to be sure they’re there and OK.”
But something in regards to the rectangular pond, flanked with evenly spaced palm trees, seems uncanny. It’s almost too perfect. That’s since the pristine lake within the desert is, in reality, a human-made pond. And that human is seemingly inescapable in any story about this place.
“There are not any photos that show this,” McGlynn says. “But presumably, the lake was dug out by Springer.”
Born in 1896 in Alabama, Curtis Springer first made a reputation for himself as a lecturer and later as a radio evangelist and fervent promotor of health foods.
As a self-described doctor, Springer took curious students’ money to attend his lectures and learn his secrets to a healthy, God-fearing life. In 1930, at a YMCA in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Springer taught a course he claimed was related to the “Extension Department of the National Academy,” an entirely made-up university. Other courses included “Methods to Banish Disease and Know the Joy of Living” and “Picking a Husband for Keeps.”
One repeated grift of Springer’s — may it’s while teaching courses, offering samples of his miracle foods or later inviting visitors to wash in his desert pool — was to ask for zero money upfront but bait-and-switch attendees in the course of the proceedings to get their money. Lots of his lectures would pause halfway through so Springer could collect “donations” and in addition offer private sessions later that day for $25 a pop.
A 1935 report titled “Curtis Howe Springer: A Quack and His Nostrums,” published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, alleged that Springer lied his way through quite a few East Coast and Midwestern cities within the early Nineteen Thirties, duping people out of money payments for courses before leaving town and adorning himself with various fictional titles along the best way.
Springer also launched a curiously named magazine, “Symposium Creative Psychologic,” a title the American Medical Association found “as meaningless as a number of the titles Springer has annexed.” Archives reveal a second magazine, named “The Elucidator,” was also published in 1935, but a second issue never appeared.
At the height of his radio fame, Springer’s show was syndicated by over 200 stations within the U.S. and one other 100 overseas. Springer claimed he had 14 million listeners per week, which can have been not removed from the reality. The show was a mixture of preaching (Springer claimed to be a Methodist minister but was later revealed to be self-ordained at best), gospel singing, screeds against the sins of alcohol and testimonials from completely happy users of his miracle medicinal cures.
These dubious products, which might later land Springer in jail, included his famous Antediluvian Tea, a mix of laxatives named after a biblical flood; a “Hollywood cocktail”; a $25 hemorrhoid kit; and Mo-Hair, a baldness cure that was later revealed to be a mix of just two ingredients: mud and oil.
In his various ads, lectures and radio shows, Springer followed his name with M.D. and Ph.D. — titles the AMA’s investigation found had no merit in anyway, as Springer never “graduated from any reputable college, medical or otherwise.” At one point in Pennsylvania, he was charged with practicing medicine with no license but skipped town while on bail, in keeping with the report.
Possibly to flee the AMA or those looking for his tax dollars or refunds for aborted courses, within the early Forties, Springer moved to Los Angeles.
While there, he once recalled how he stumbled upon a 25-cent pamphlet in a secondhand Hollywood bookstore in regards to the “mineral springs of the Pacific Coast.” Inside, he saw mention of a spot named “Fort Soda Mineral Springs,” within the Mojave Desert. When he was unable to locate the location on a map, Springer headed into the desert, some 200 miles from his Hollywood home, and managed to search out the spring that was sourced from the underground Mojave River, on the sting of the traditional Soda Dry Lake. On the time, the location was an uninhabited wilderness with nothing on the land beyond some old baking soda mines and the remnants of Fort Soda, an early Spanish after which U.S. military camp where dozens of Native American people were killed within the 1860s.
Springer and his wife Helen filed a mining claim to an 8-by-5-mile swath of federal land there and proceeded to construct the place the preacher could be eternally remembered for.
To construct his ambitious resort, Springer headed back to Los Angeles and hired homeless men on Skid Row to return to the desert and help him tap the spring and erect the settlement at what was then named Soda Springs. Springer himself admitted to bringing “a whole lot” of men from Skid Row to assist construct the location and paying them in room and board.
He coined the location “Zzyzx” as a gag of sorts — so he would all the time have “the last word in health.” The name was formally, and controversially, recognized by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in 1965, leading to the enduring green sign on I-15.
Springer’s hired help built the “hotel” — the identical dorms used today by visiting students — in town’s most important esplanade he named “Boulevard of Dreams.”
The primary newspaper commercial for the resort ran in November 1945 within the Los Angeles Times, offering bus trips to Zzyzx from LA hotels and promising mud, sun, mineral baths, homemade ice cream and a “definite Christian atmosphere.” Springer had long been a staunch advocate of prohibition, and the location never served a drop of alcohol.
Zzyzx would prove to be a giant success, largely because of the apparent cost. “We accept whatever amount God has made possible so that you can pay,” the ad stated.
This also proved to be a falsehood; Springer charged $50 per week to the overwhelming majority of guests, though he would grant a free stay if the visitor provided a letter from their “preacher, priest or rabbi” proving that they were indeed “penniless.”
The positioning mostly bussed in pensioners from Southern California and will welcome as much as 140 guests, all looking for to be cleansed within the desert by Springer’s godly advice, hot mineral water and health cures. And for a few of those that visited the location, it appeared to work.
“I had arthritis in my hand so bad I could hardly bend it,” one unnamed 89-year-old guest said in a Latest York Times story headlined “Zzyzx is a booming health spa.” “Now look,” she added, before “flexing her gnarled hand with ease.”
Through the Nineteen Fifties, laborers at Zzyzx continued to expand Springer’s dream within the desert. At one time, the location boasted a recording studio, a metal-working shop, a printing facility and even Springer’s own private airstrip named Zyport, which ferried the radio star back to Hollywood every week to advertise his recent attraction.
It was also fitted with a PA system and loudspeaker, from which Springer would bellow a twice-daily sermon while not recording his radio show on-site.
Most of the advertisements for the resort claim the cleansing water that sprung from the underground river into the cross-shaped pool and baths was naturally “warm.”
But as with all of Springer’s claims, all wasn’t because it seemed at Zzyzx.
“He used to heat it up and say it was ‘hot springs,’” McGlynn laughs. “He had a diesel generator to heat the water and say ‘ooh it’s hot mineral springs.’”
Springer’s automotive salesman-like approach to drawing customers to the desert could be heard on an archival recording of his radio show.
“We’ve this lovely 12,000-acre estate here that belongs to God,” Springer declares. “If you must come and stay, come and stay for a month. If at the tip of that month, you could have any results that you think that are worthwhile, and also you’re in a position to achieve this, we’d appreciate anything you could have to contribute. In the event you don’t, you owe us nothing.”
“The concept was that the water got here from a ‘cleansing spring,’” McGlynn says, and while the water was technically protected, it was largely undrinkable because of the mineral content. “The water would literally cleanse you by supplying you with diarrhea.”
Things began to go mistaken within the late Sixties, when Springer allowed those that made large donations to construct houses on the land, which was still technically owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Springer’s 1944 mining claim didn’t allow occupation or development of the land beyond mining use, and Springer did all the pieces there but mine.
In 1967, an LA Times author named Charles Hillinger published several exposes painting Springer as nothing greater than a fraud and a huckster, living on stolen land. Springer was described by the paper as a “pudgy, blue-eyed, ruddy-faced, thin-haired promoter.” Hillinger’s reports revealed that the IRS and Bureau of Land Management had been investigating the squatter for the reason that early Nineteen Fifties for tax evasion and constructing countless buildings on land he never owned.
In 1968, Springer was arrested on the resort and served 49 days of a 90-day sentence on 65 counts of false promoting and misrepresentation. Certainly one of the fees named his $25 hemorrhoid treatment as useless, and one other said Springer sold easy foods similar to celery and parsnip as pricey “health supplements.” Springer was also charged with falsely claiming his regimen “cured cancer.”
After his sentence, Springer returned to the resort and continued to operate his business there, despite the BLM’s serving notices that he owed $34,000 in rent. The news of his charges also shined a highlight on the Zzyzx and brought more reporters to the distant road.
In 1969, a Chicago Tribune journalist approached Springer on the resort with some tough questions and received a frosty welcome.
“I’ve told you 3 times I don’t want any snooping around. You newspaper men are similar to detectives. … In the event you’re searching for trouble, we’ll give it to you,” Springer told the reporter, who described the heated moment somewhat poetically: “During this outburst, his ears reddened to the identical color as his bulbous nose, setting off his white hair relatively flatteringly within the late afternoon sun.”
Though, as was often the case within the diverging views on the mercurial figure, even that report stated that he “could also be a shameless fraud, or he could also be a fantastic healer of mankind.”
After six years of court proceedings, in 1974, the Bureau of Land Management finally, forcibly evicted Springer from the town he named but never owned.
“Behind the fraudulent acts he has perpetrated stand a whole lot, or 1000’s and possibly tens of 1000’s of people that have been bilked of their money and possibly their health,” a probation officer wrote, adding that the spa was “portrayed in promoting as an Eden while compared is directly the other.”
Just two years later, the location was became the university research center that also operates today. In a wierd TV news moment, on the day of the launch of the location in 1976, as journalists gathered and cameras were rolling, Springer drove as much as the location, in violation of his court order.
“The 80-year-old super squatter,” a local news anchor reported, “held court by the lake he built, boasting of the thousands and thousands of free beds and free meals he had handed out at the location through the years.”
When asked by a reporter where he got the cash to fund that charity, Springer curtly replied, “Well, that’s none of your small business.”
At the moment, the Philadelphia Inquirer estimated that Springer earned between $250,000 and $750,000 a yr from donations. One other report said he netted over $1 million a yr between 1963 and 1968.
“I think this property belongs to God,” Springer told the cameras. “I’m going to maintain my foot right within the door. I’ll fight until hell freezes over, and the last dog has been hung.”
It will be Springer’s last time at Zzyzx, though the preacher protested the eviction decision until his dying day.
Others also spoke out in defense of Springer and what he achieved within the desert. “He had done a number of good. He gave retirees a spot to vacation,” the owner of a hotel in nearby Baker told reporters. “Now a number of persons are left with a vacuum of their hearts.”
“We aided within the rehabilitation of 4,000 destitute men,” Springer said in his twilight years in 1982. “I’d like our youngsters and friends to know, and never forget in regards to the good things we did at Zzyzx.”
Curtis Springer died on Aug. 19, 1985, in Las Vegas, on the age of 88.
“It’s interesting to me that there hasn’t been a biography or movie about his legacy,” McGlynn tells me. “Not many individuals learn about him.”
Two schlocky horror movies — one, a Katherine Heigl vehicle that holds the unenviable title of lowest-grossing movie ever made — have been set on Zzyzx Road. Each were released in 2006, meaning one was forced to misspell the name, “Zzyzyx” Road, so as to add much more confusion to the name.
Setting a horror movie there is sensible; the cinematic landscape and desolation are ripe for contemporary Western tales of bloodshed and scares, and in researching this story, I discovered two forgotten real-life tragic events at the location, each involving Curtis Springer’s then-teenage sons.
The primary happened in December 1952, when Springer’s 16-year-old son, Terry Foster Springer, awoke in the course of the night to a ruckus in a goat pen. Springer said he believed a wild cat was in among the many livestock and fired his .22-caliber rifle on the commotion. The shot killed a person named Roberto De La Armendariz. Springer’s son was never held or charged in relation to the incident.
A number of months later, in 1953, Springer’s older son, Charles, 19, killed himself in a bizarre accident while out with a celebration of friends hunting rabbits. In accordance with a brief obituary published within the Every day American, Springer jumped out of the truck through which he was riding to kill a wounded rabbit with the butt of his rifle. “The rifle barrel, loosened from the butt, discharged driving the bullet into the lung of the unlucky young man.” Charles Springer reportedly died shortly after while en path to Barstow Hospital.
Records also show each of Springer’s parents died on-site at Zzyzx within the Nineteen Fifties.
Over the 50 years, the crucifix-shaped swimming pool has remained mostly intact. And its presence in the course of the research center has been what McGlynn calls an “attractive nuisance.”
Wallace, who lives on-site and has worked there since 2007, wants visitors to know that they need to stay on the designated path around Tuendae Lake. “You’ll be able to see all the pieces from the Springer days from there,” he says, adding that the swimming pool has been “wrecked” by gawkers.
Possibly because of its history, or its remoteness, lately, the location has sometimes turn out to be a draw for those looking for life off the grid.
“We’re a magnet; we’re at the tip of a weirdly named road, which piques everyone’s interest. We get vandalized. We get people poking around where they are usually not purported to,” Wallace says. “People think it’s abandoned. They walk away with stuff and say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was here. I’m just taking this chainsaw.’ It’s crazy.”
Wallace said that in the course of the pandemic, the location became a destination for some. “They didn’t know where to go. ‘I want to get out. I’ll just go to the desert,’ they’d say, they usually’d get themselves in trouble.”
“Persons are out here in the course of the summer with half a bottle of water, no idea where they’re going or what they’re doing,” Wallace says. “However the desert will all the time win.”
I ask McGlynn if Zzyzx ever feels a bit of spooky at night. “I don’t feel that way, but I feel some visitors might. It’s incredibly still,” he says. “I find it incredibly peaceful.”
There’s an undeniable strangeness to the landscape at the tip of Zzyzx Road. As I drive out, lost-looking members of a punk band step out of a Ford Mustang emblazoned with the band’s name. They peer through the palm trees and dusty structures built by Doc Springer, attempting to determine the perfect spot for a photograph.
“God will provide,” Springer told a reporter just a few years before he was evicted from the little city he built. “In the event you play the sport fair, I think the massive boss upstairs will level things out. That’s my religion.”
When visiting the Desert Studies Center, for your personal safety, please adhere to the designated public path.