Quartzsite: Desert Town, Winter Capital of the RV World

Quartzsite, Arizona, has a permanent population of roughly twenty-four hundred. Every winter, somewhere between one and two million people converge on the surrounding Bureau of Land Management desert to park their RVs, trade rocks and gems, attend swap meets, and stay for weeks or months in one of the largest informal gatherings on the continent. The main January gem and mineral show has been running since nineteen sixty-four. The Bureau of Land Management allows long-term camping on public land here at minimal cost, which has made Quartzsite the unofficial capital of American nomadic living.

The town's other landmark is the grave of Hi Jolly, an Ottoman camel driver named Hadji Ali who came to the United States in eighteen fifty-six as part of the Army's experimental camel corps in the Sonoran Desert. When the experiment ended, Hadji Ali wandered the desert for decades prospecting and guiding. He died near Quartzsite in nineteen oh two and is buried under a small pyramid topped with a camel, still visible in the Quartzsite Cemetery.