Chiriaco Summit: Where Patton's Army Trained

In nineteen forty-two, with North Africa in German hands and American troops untested in desert warfare, Major General George Patton chose this scorching stretch of inland California to build the largest military training ground in history. The Desert Training Center covered eighteen thousand square miles across California, Arizona, and Nevada, and trained more than one million soldiers in armored combat.

Chiriaco Summit was the entrance to Camp Young, the command post for the entire operation. Soldiers drilled in brutal desert heat, learning to fight in conditions as brutal as the Sahara.

The General George S. Patton Memorial Museum, established in the late nineteen eighties, sits on the original camp entrance. It holds tanks, artillery, and personal effects from Patton's career. Most visitors are surprised to learn the scale of what happened here, right beside the interstate, in the middle of nowhere.