December 19, 2023 Quite an Airport

The Liberty Gazette

December 19, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Along I-10 in the middle of the California desert is a 5,300’ paved runway with nothing nearby but a racecourse, the Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. The 2.68-mile grand prix circuit with its 17 turns came almost a century after the airport. 

The town formerly known as Gruendike’s Well had a garage, and one day in 1921, cotton farmer Steve Ragsdale was driving through when suddenly he had car trouble. During his stop at the shop, he surveyed his surroundings and decided he’d buy the place. The whole town. 

“Desert Steve,” as he came to be known, renamed his town Desert Center. He built a café, service station, and new garage. The café remained open 24/7, 365 days a year, from the 1920’s until the early 2000’s. They’d say they couldn’t close because they lost their keys. For many years, this was the only stop for travelers through the desert.

Desert Steve promoted his town with ads that told of the amenities along the shortest route from Phoenix to Los Angeles: a store, a hotel with pool and showers; the café, of course, and real western hospitality, and a “large plane landing field.” 

They had a school, too. To get the county to send a teacher, Desert Steve ran an ad for a mechanic with a very large family. A “real good mechanic” was hired, and the county sent a teacher. Eventually, they opened another market from which was sold, for a time, the most Coleman camping equipment in the entire U.S.A. 

In the early 1940s, the airport became the Desert Center Army Air Field. It served as a sub-base of Thermal Army Air Field and a support base for the Air Technical Service Command near Camp Desert Center. Today, if you want to see auto or motorcycle racing, you can land at the Desert Center Airport, park your plane, walk just a few yards to the ticket gate, and find a seat in the grandstands. We hear the racing there is premier, and there’s really nothing else left in Desert Center other than the post office, a few derelict buildings from the town’s heyday, and the Desert Center cemetery.

Desert Steve had planned to live out the rest of his life there. He put up his own grave marker where he wanted to be buried. But he ended up moving to the summit of Santa Rosa Mountain in 1950 and died there in 1971. His grave marker in Desert Center still stands: “Desert Steve, born June 16, 1882. Founded D.C. Sept. 21, 1921. Worked like hell to be an honest American citizen. Loved his fellow men & served them. Hated booze guzzling. Hated war. Hated dirty deal damn fool politicians. Hopes a guy named Ragsdale will ever serve humanity at Desert Center. He dug his own grave. Here are his bones. I put this damn thing up before I kicked off. Nuff sed --- Steve. Died ____, 19__.” 

Not quite a ghost town, not quite a grave. But quite an airport.

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