It Grows in the High Desert

California City, a 1970s planned community that was originally intended to accommodate millions of people, is now home to less than ten thousand. Once envisioned as the next Los Angeles or San Francisco, today this desert town consists of a city center, houses spidering off the small main drag, and hundreds of dirt roads and street signs. One of the last towns in the Mojave before true off-grid living, this unrealized utopia is a mix of people choosing to live apart from society and those forced there by financial necessity.