Oro Grande: Cement Town on the High Mojave

Oro Grande sits on the Mojave River just north of Victorville, and its name means Big Gold in Spanish, a reminder of the silver and gold prospecting that drew the first settlers to the Victor Valley in the eighteen eighties. The gold didn't last, but something else did.

A cement plant began operating at Oro Grande in nineteen oh seven, taking advantage of the local limestone deposits and the railroad that ran alongside the Mojave River. That plant, expanded and modernized over the decades, operated well into the twenty-first century, making Oro Grande one of the longest-lived industrial sites on the entire Route Sixty-Six corridor. The highway passed directly through on its way between Barstow and San Bernardino, and the massive white smokestacks of the cement plant became a familiar landmark for generations of travelers on the final Mojave stretch before the descent into the Los Angeles Basin.