That Strange Word on the Freeway Sign
Near Zzyzx, California
If you are driving Interstate Fifteen between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, somewhere south of the little town of Baker you pass a green sign for an exit unlike any other. It reads, simply, Zzyzx Road, spelled with that impossible triple Z. It is Exit two hundred thirty-nine, and it is surely one of the most puzzled-over exit signs in the California desert, named by Curtis Howe Springer, who claimed it was the last word in the English language.
Take the exit and the pavement soon gives way to gravel, running about four and a half miles south toward the springs. Around you spreads the Mojave National Preserve, roughly one and a half million acres of desert protected by Congress under the California Desert Protection Act, signed into law on October thirty-first, nineteen ninety-four. It is the third largest unit of the national park system in the lower states.
Out here the silence is almost total. The salt flats glare white, the mountains ring the horizon, and many species of birds pass through the wetlands at Zzyzx. What began as an ancient watering hole, became an army post, a soda mine, and a quack's paradise, is now simply a strange and beautiful place to stop, at the end of the alphabet, in the middle of nowhere.
