Zzyzx -- you can't NOT be intrigued with a place with a name (and history) like this. It's a short drive along the unpaved Zzyzx Road off the I-15 south of Baker.
Zzyzx (pronounced Zy-zacks, NOT Ziz-zicks) has a history as goofy as its name. Formerly known by the much-more-mundane name of Soda Springs, Curtis Springer, a well-known radio evangelist and "medicine man" whose syndicated broadcasts appeared on 200 radio stations across the US and 100 more overseas, obtained the land around the Soda Springs in 1941 by filing a mining claim with the US Government. He renamed the place Zzyzx, which he said was the last word in the English language.
Soon he had built a spa and spring-fed pool at Zzyzyx, hawking miracle-cures and touting the health-benefits of the spring waters to his millions of listeners.
Of course, he was a complete quack in every respect -- he wasn't even a real clergyman.
All was fine until Springer decided to sell lots at Zzyzx in the late 1960s, violating the terms of his mining claim. The US Government sued him, claiming he was squatting on the land because he was not mining its minerals as he had promised to do when he took out the mining claim. In 1976 he was convicted of squatting, his mining claim was revoked, he was kicked out of Zzyzx, and his spa was shut down.
The Government turned the land at Zzyxz over to the California Sate University System to run the old spa as a desert research institute, which still operates today (2016).
Also during the mid-1970s, the Government was pursuing Springer separately for making false claims about the curative powers of Zzyzx spring water. Again, he was eventually convicted and served most a jail sentence in a Federal penitentiary. He spent the rest of his life in Las Vegas.
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