John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints

Mojave Desert, California, Nevada and Utah

Pronunciation

For British readers: "Mo-har-vay" or "Mo-har-vee".

For US readers: "Mo-hah-vay" or "Mo-hah-vee".

The word should be pronounced exactly the same in both cases. Only the way in which the pronunciation is described differs.

The first syllable should rhyme with "go", the second syllable should rhyme with "car" and the third syllable should rhyme with "way", or "me".

For British readers, I write the middle syllable as "har" instead of "ha" or "hah", in an attempt to make it clear that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme with words such as "car", "far" and "jar", and not with an "a" as in words such as "hamster", "hand" or "have". In British English there is no difference in pronunciation between "ha" (when rhymed with "car", etc) and "har". Most British readers would probably be very confused and not know how to pronounce "hah". I have received a number of email messages saying that "hah" is the best way of describing the pronunciation of the second syllable for US readers.

Spelling

The correct spelling for the name of the desert is Mojave. However, in other contexts the same word is sometimes spelt Mohave, for example in the name of Lake Mohave.

"Mohave" should be pronounced in exactly the same way as "Mojave".

Location and Size

The Mojave Desert occupies a huge area of southern California, from the southern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains roughly as far south as Interstate 10, where it meets the Colorado Desert. The Mojave also stretches east across southern Nevada and into the extreme southwestern corner of Utah.

The Mojave Desert is bordered on the south by I-10 in California, on the west by US395 in California, on the north by US50 in Nevada and on the east by I-15.

Some sources maintain that the Mojave Desert is not a separate desert but simply a transition zone between the Great Basin Desert and the Sonoran Desert.

Death Valley lies near the border between the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin Desert.

The Mojave Desert covers an area of approximately 25,000 square miles. For comparison, the total area of Scotland, including the Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands and other islands, is 30,147 square miles.

According to one source, the word Mojave comes from two Indian words, aha (meaning water) and macave (meaning along or beside). "Mojave" therefore translates as "along or beside the water". When applied to the Mojave Indians, it translates as "the people who live along the water", referring to the Colorado River.

Description

After climbing out the Los Angeles basin over the Cajon Summit, Interstate 15 crosses the Mojave to Las Vegas. Photograph (21KB). The transition from the normally relatively cool and cloudy/smoggy Los Angeles to the clear blue skies and extreme dry heat of the desert takes place over a few short miles and is quite an experience. On every occasion that we have done this journey, always in late May or early June, there has been a most distinct line where the L.A. smog cloud finishes and the temperature rises from the mid-seventies to over a hundred. For first-time visitors to the USA, this is where you learn that having the car windows open won't make things any cooler, since the actual desert air itself is hot. It's also where you learn how to operate the car's air conditioning and discover that it is only effective when you close all the car windows.

Along the main roads which run through the Mojave Desert (I-15, I-40 and California State Highway 58) there are no sand dunes as are found in the Sahara or Arabian deserts, nor giant cacti as found in the eastern part of the Sonoran Desert. Instead, the Mojave Desert is a land of rugged arid mountainous scrub land. The dominant vegetation of the Mojave includes creosote bushes and sagebrush, plus the occasional yucca plant and Joshua tree, the last being a form of yucca plant found only in the Mojave.

However, a number of species of cacti can be found in some areas of the northern part of Joshua Tree National Park, which lies in the southernmost part of the Mojave Desert. These are relatively small cacti, not the giant Saguaro cacti of the Sonoran Desert.

I'm told that the Mojave Desert does have some sand dunes. I suspect the Mojave National Preserve (north of I-15 in California near the Nevada border) may be one of the main area where dunes are found.

Crossing the Mojave Desert is an interesting but perfectly safe thing to do provided you keep to the main roads.

If you are crossing the southern Mojave on I-10 then I would highly recommend a visit to Joshua Tree National Park.