SNEAK PEEK: A Novel about a Desert Rat

My current novel-in-progress is an historical fiction work about the man who founded Desert Center, California, in the 1920s. He’s a fascinating character, one of the famous “Desert Rats” who scraped out a pretty decent living in an area that would be uninhabitable for most humans.

At the time of the founding, there was no paved road between Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California. A track through the desert sands was the only way to travel between the cities.

There was a stretch of 100 miles between towns along that route.. Steve Ragsdale broke down halfway between once, and decided there needed to be a town there—with a garage, gas pumps, and a café. Since no one else had done it, he did, and Desert Center was born.

The story of why he founded it, the obstacles he encountered, his unique solutions, his toughness, his love of the desert fauna and flora, notoriously bad poetry, quirky signs and sayings, and a scandal in his later years are the subject of my novel. My favorite themes of chaos and how humans respond will be present, as it reflects much of his life. Other themes will be perseverance and the weakness of the human condition.

Steve was born on June 16, 1882, in Coffeyville, Kansas, and died on May 2, 1971 at 88 years of age. He

Here’s a couple of insights from my research:

Steve says the Desert Tortoise is not only the most interesting, but the most harmless and therefore endowed with the greatest wisdom of all God’s creatures, Says if man would pattern after the Tortoise we’d have no more murderous wars. (From Harry Oliver’s The Desert Rat Scrapbook, Winter, 1946.)
Ragsdale was a desert eccentric of the first order, and his advertising for Desert Center in publications such as Desert Magazine reflected his personality:

U Need Us – We Need U”
“Our Main Street is 100-miles long!”
“We lost our keys… we can’t close!” (a reference to the fact that the café has been open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year since it opened in 1921)
“Free Room and Board Every Day The Sun Doesn’t Shine In Desert Center”
“If You Don’t Believe Me, You Can Go To Hell, or Visit Me in Desert Center in August! Nuf sed, Steve”.

“’Nuf Sed” was the way that Desert Steve ended his missives and articles. My working title for the novel, at the moment, is ’Nuf Sed: A Novel of a Desert Rat. (I’m not sold on that yet—leave a comment below if you have any reactions or ideas.)

More Sneek Peaks

Cover of Nuff Sed: A Novel of Desert Steve by Markus McDowell.

Desert. Sun. Sand. No roads or human settlements within fifty miles in any direction. The perfect place to found a town?

That’s what Steve Ragsdale believed. So he and his wife bundled up their four kids in their 1915 Ford Model T, bought a local prospector’s shack and well, and built a fuel station (50-gallon drum), a repair garage, and café. He advertised “Free food on days the sun doesn’t shine” and “No drunks, no dogs—we prefer dogs.” He was the owner, sheriff, rockhound, author, naturalist, desert guide, and Santa Claus at Christmas.

He became one of the local “desert rats” and earned the moniker “Desert Steve.” Along the way, he became part of history: the Colorado Aqueduct, the construction of the first State and National highways, the invention of prepaid healthcare, General Patton and World War II, the largest iron mine in the United States, flying saucer sightings, murder, and much more.

Based on a true story, this is the tale of a quirky, clever, and bold man who pursued a dream, wrote bad poetry, and found ways to survive when many would have perished or packed it in.

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