The Land That God Forgot, Part Three

The No Name Trailer Park, Pearsonville, California – April 1999

Driving through the Mojave is like passing through successive layers of California history. There are haunted places where nothing has changed in decades: little mom & pop motels quietly disintegrating, ruined roads that lead to contaminated sites, dormant volcanoes and lost fortunes. The landscape is stripped of everything we take for granted: trees, houses, roads & bridges – and the raw earth is revealed in geologic time, littered with broken dreams.

I was driving north through the upper Mojave Desert on my way to Nevada when I came across the No Name Trailer Park on the west side of I-395, the highway itself a relic. Blasted airstream trailers littered the property and the EAT sign, the only remains of another defunct roadside diner, rose like a monument, into the desert sky.

I had my reliable Mamiya 645 with me, and this image was shot on Kodak TMY 400 using a polarizer and an R25 to kick the clouds off the sky. Let me know if you’d like a print.