A Fire in the Mojave

Tuesday, 25 August, a motorist reported a fire south of California Route 62 at 5:54 a.m. He also reported he saw what appeared to be a body. Responders put the fire out, did indeed find a body and turned it over to the Sheriff’s Department.

For those not familiar with the area: CA Highway 62 (otherwise known as Twentynine Palms Highway) is the main east-west road through the Morongo Basin. It’s accessed from the south from I-10, just west of Palm Springs. Midway (almost) it meets CA Highway 247, which heads northwest above L.A., toward Victorville and Barstow. From the east, it intersects with CA Highway 117. Highway 62 continues toward Parker, AZ. 117 heads south to I-10 and Desert Center, the ghost town that was once home for workers at the Eagle Mountain Kaiser iron mine. Joshua Tree National Park hugs the southern side of 62 and the north side of I-10. A map search can give you a better idea.

Highway 62 is used by people going to and from the Colorado River and, from the Palm Springs area, to go to Las Vegas via Amboy. Truckers use it to transport heavy loads so as to miss the steep Indio Grade on I-10 and to make a non-Interstate, back-roads run. Recreational vehicles and campers do the same thing. It is scenic, in its own way.

So much for the geography and traffic lessons. The notable thing is that there’s sixty or so miles of empty desert along Highway 62 to dump a body. Sixty miles of empty desert along Highway 62. Thousands of square miles of desert beyond that, accessible by dirt roads. An entire National Park. Yet the body was left a hundreds yards south of Twentynine Palms Highway and Hollinger Road. If you map it out, that’s about a mile from both the California Highway Patrol Morongo Basin Station, and the San Bernardino County Courthouse/Sheriff’s station and jail complex.

All that desert and to pick that locale…

Another burning body was found about 90 miles from Joshua Tree in a field in a semi-remote mountainous part of Norco (about 2.5 miles west of I-15 and the Riverside Freeway) the previous Saturday, about 5 a.m.. That one was identified as 39-year-old Hispanic man from Palmdale. There was also one back on February 23rd, off Interstate 10 in Redlands.

Update: A local blog/e-newspaper Cactus Thorns, has the same information, including a G-map shot.