1 - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

To meet the crush of
recreationists to enjoy the
great outdoors, the BLM has
provided a great number of
public campgrounds. Depicted
here in photos are those bordering
the Sierras in the Owens Valley.
The text deals mostly with
those campgrounds in the
Mojave and Colorado Deserts.
INCLE SAM'S newest desert landlord
is the all-purpose Bureau of Land
I Management, charged with a nearly
impossible task, the regulation of
competing public uses of some 12 million
acres of Southern California desert.
BLM is new at this landlord businessonly
in the context of serving the general
public. Since its birth in 1948 as the child
of and successsor to the old Grazing Service
and the General Land Office, BLM
has been concerned with mining, livestock
leases, homesteads and general
administration of the vast Public Domain,
but its direct service to the recreation
public has been a recent addition to
its manifold duties.
In 1964 Congress enacted the Classification
and Multiple Use Act. Out of that
umbrella legislation, the fallout included
the California Desert Program, funded
beginning in 1972.
The CDP directly spawned a series of
studies lumped together as the Interim
Critical Management Plan, the ICMP for
short. The only short thing about this
program is its abbreviated title, in which
the words "Interim" and "Critical" are
the keys, depending on your point of
view.
"Critical" has described the reaction
of conservationist and off-roader alike
and "Interim" has been the hallmark of
the bureau's defense.
The bureau has jumped into the desert
with both feet, or rather all four wheels,
although it's not clear to many whether
those wheels are "all-wheel-drive."
Since 1972, when the bureau received
a congressional mandate to manage Nature's
Back 40 from Eureka and Saline
Valley south to the Mexican border at
Jacumba, the Yuha Desert and the Al-
Opposite page: Corn Springs, a popular area for
desert campers.
Desert/ December 1976 37
godones Sand Dunes, its specialists have
struggled to present a Desert Plan that
keeps the conservationists and the
off-roaders at least mollified, if not
ecstatic. How well the Plan will work
cannot be attested. It's too early and the
interim is too much with us.
Campgrounds for the off-roaders as
well as the drivers of 20,000-pound
motor homes have been established in
the Owens Valley, the Mojave midregion,
near Barstow, in the Colorado
Desert and along the escarpment
over-looking Anza Borrego Desert State
Park. A uniformed ranger force is slowly
building and the first field ranger station
Above: Symmes Creek Campground [55 camping
units] near Independence, is located at the
base of Kearsarge Pass. The Pass was named
after the Northern ship that sunk the Southern
warship, Alabama, during the waning days of
the Civil War. Below: Chimney Peak Campground
[36 camping units] is located above the
6,000 foot elevation mark and affords the visitor
to national resource lands a comfortable campsite
beneath the pines of the Sierras.
has been established near Glamis.
The symbol of the Desert Plan to date
is the new Barstow Way Station, a combination
of information center, rest stop
and informal museum, just off Interstate
15 near the southwest approach to the
desert city. A second way station is in
the preliminary planning stage for the