In my 9th grade geography class, Mr. Ferguson had several standard rants he liked to visit on us, like how high school freshmen were not yet fully human. We all had the potential of full humanity, and in a few more years we could achieve it, with work. We were halfway between primordial ooze and human.
Another rant was how we lived on the outskirts of civilization, Los Angeles being civilization. “And you can see,” he’d say,”as you go from LA towards the desert, that the people get less and less hip until you get here, right on the edge.”
At the time I thought he was funny and slightly mean, but probably wrong. I was living in Joshua Tree and going to school in Twentynine Palms. Almost three decades later, I’m back living in Joshua Tree and working as a therapist in Twentynine Palms, and I’m thinking he was probably right. I don’t know about people getting less hip as you leave LA–it’s arguably true, but depends a lot on your values and aesthetics–but look at this map of population density and you will see that I do live on the edge of civilization. (Click on it for a clearer view.) Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms are the last two splotches of orange (at least 100 people per square mile, no more than 250) heading east out of LA. Just east of us is all fewer than 10 people per square mile for an hour’s drive, then less than 1 person per square mile for another hour. It’s beautiful country, but desolate.
Nathen's Miraculous Escape 
May 19, 2013 at 10:40 am
Nathen, I recall reading about a plan to put (private?) high-speed rail from the outskirts of LA over to Las Vegas. Is that plan happening / affecting your area?
May 19, 2013 at 2:05 pm
It looks like that would be going through north of us, basically paralleling the 15–a 1:20 trip to get to the Victorville station from here (mostly west, unfortunately). It’s hard to say if it’s actually going to happen, especially since there’s no high speed rail from LA to San Francisco yet. I almost never go to Las Vegas, but I would consider driving to Victorville to get to LA.
May 19, 2013 at 2:37 pm
OK, got it. LA-SF would make more sense, but LA-LV could potentially be more profitable, right?
Also…daaaamn the distances are so huge out there. I know this, but it’s still hard to think about. 1:20 is beyond the range of any final destination I would tend to drive to voluntarily, let alone as the jumping-off point for a larger trip into the city you are on the outskirts of?!?
May 19, 2013 at 7:41 pm
Yes, it’s crazy. It’s 2.5 hours to LA. We probably wouldn’t go there much at all, but have family and close friends that we don’t see otherwise, and one brand new nephew.
Also, consider: When I moved out of my parent’s house in the early 90s, I moved to Redding, CA–12 hours from home, which I’d do on all of my week+ breaks from school. Then it was SF, which is 8 hours away–a big improvement. Still, I’d need to visit for a week to make the long drive worth it. Eugene is 18 hours. Damian, Gabe and I would do that one in my truck in one shot–one driver, one passenger, and one sleeping in the bed, trading shifts.
Get used to that and the east coast feels pretty crowded with cities.
May 19, 2013 at 3:31 pm
You could always tell the teachers who weren’t originally from the area by their rants about being closer to Los Angeles. Or any other part of “society.” :-)
Of course, none of Mr. Ferguson’s rants could ever hold a candle to the rants that Mr. Jones could get going on — and how all of them boiled down to football in some way, shape, or form.
May 19, 2013 at 7:42 pm
Ah, I wish I’d had Mr. Ferguson with you, John. That would have been a lot more fun.
May 22, 2013 at 4:42 pm
One thing living in the greater LA area taught me is that you cannot judge “civilization” by proximity to LA. Culture does not magically rub off on you just because you live in the general suburban sprawl of Southern California.
There are scattered neighborhoods in LA proper that I liked almost as much as SF or Oakland, but who knows if any of our teachers actually lived in any of those places. I kind of doubt it.
As far as culture goes, Joshua Tree has more per capita than most places.
May 25, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Well said, John.
May 26, 2013 at 10:24 am
Well- I don’t know much about this here ‘culture’ thing, but I’ve noticed that since the price for bobcat pelts has gone up to over 100$ in China, all them city folks have been up here trappin’ ’em. They don’t think anybody lives here, and who’d miss all the bobcats anyway? With no bobcats, we-all are expectin’ a glut of squirrels by mid summer; damn good eatin’, I’d say. You can find me on the front porch with a rifle and a bottle of whisky. Now that’s culture!
May 29, 2013 at 4:26 pm
We obviously need a version of Google Maps with population density of self-identified Hipsters.
June 2, 2013 at 5:45 pm
That would be amazing. And I wonder if old Mr. Ferguson would have identified as a hipster, or whatever we called hipsters in the mid-80s.
August 17, 2013 at 10:14 pm
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