I had the idea for a historical novel based on the life of Steve “Desert Steve” Ragsdale in 2020. He was a preacher from Coffeyville in the late 1800s, who gave up the pulpit (out of frustrations with the church) to go farm cotton in California near the Arizona border. When cotton prices dropped due to World War I, he turned the farm over to the tax collector and set out to found a town in the middle of the Colorado desert between Phoenix and Los Angeles. In those days, the route was merely two tracks through the desert sands.
He bought land from an old prospector named Peter Gruendyke, 50 miles (ca. 80 km) in all directions from any other town or settlement. Desert Steve built a gas station, a garage, and a café, and offered water free to travelers along that rough road on horse, buggy, or Ford Model T’s.
When the government decided to pave a proper road through the desert, they moved it a few miles to the south. Steve packed up his town and moved it to what would become Highway 60/66
The town was called Desert Center, and Desert Steve was quite the character. He was one of the group of “Desert Rats,” people who explored and lived in this inhospitable land. His quirky character, bad poetry, and rough ways led many to love him and others to hate him.
This tiny town, run by a man who was his owner, mayor, sheriff, and pretty much everything else, in the middle of nowhere, played an important role in American history. The Colorado Aqueduct was constructed nearby in the 1930s. General Patton trained his troops at an airfield nearby in the 1940s. Kaiser Steel ran a nearby iron mine, one of the largest in the United States. Perhaps surprisingly, Desert Center is the location of the first health insurance program in history, set up for the aqueduct workers and their families—a program that was eventually bought by Kaiser, and became Kaiser Permanente.
I researched for two years, through libraries, books, government records, desert magazines, and even exploring desert locations in my Jeep.
I begin writing the first draft this year. But about 25,000 words in, I realize that my timeline, the chronology of events, was too fuzzy. I needed to nail down more events: of Steve’s life, the history of the town, the history of the famous “desert rats” who Steve was friends with, as well as the world events that were going on (the invention of the first mass-produced cars, the aqueduct, the mining, the world wars, electricity, radio, and so much more.) This was only 100 years ago, and yet the number of changes in the world are stunning.
I needed to immerse myself in the history of Desert Center, and be able to recite the timeline, the stories, the tragedies, and the comical comings and goings of a desert community in the man who founded and ran it.
Using the app Aeon Timeline, I arranged all the events in chronological order, guessing when the history does not provide us with firm dates. I made all my research notes, character ideas, and seen ideas in the Ulysses app, tagging each one with a date, synced to Aeon Timeline.
I begin to see the big picture, and it elucidated certain themes about Desert Steve’s life, the birth, growth, ups and downs, and demise of Desert Center.
I’m still doing research to flush out the timeline. But I can already tell that once I finish this retooling, the book will almost write itself because the historical events constantly bring up ideas for scenes and dialogue.
It has renewed my excitement in this project. While there have been a few books about Desert Steve and/or Desert Center, no one has undertaken to write a historical novel. But it’s a wonderful story of the desert pioneers in the early 1900s in California, and it needed to be written. (Today, Desert center is a virtual ghost town, sitting alongside Interstate 10, a quiet reminder of our past and the incredible people who lived it.
I’ll be posting first drafts and sneak peaks for my patrons, as I have been doing. There is some fascinating background material that I will reveal as well, that will probably not make it into the novel, but will serve as important background.
Stay tuned for more from this entertaining story. If you wish to see the sneak peaks in early draft, join me as a patron on Patreon.
Coming in 2024
Desert. Sun. Sand. And no roads or human settlements within 50 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 (a 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 mayor, sheriff, rockhound, author, naturalist, desert guide, and Santa Claus at Christmastime. He became one of the local “Desert Rats” and earned the moniker “Desert Steve.” Along the way, he became part of history: 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, 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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