Mojave Road

Los Angeles County, September 30, 1994



Before we were singing and getting our ‘kicks on Route 66’ (the world’s safest lounge cover by the way), an ancestral Native America equivalent of Bobby Troop was likely going on about keeping ‘Kee-mo-sabe off Mohave Road.’ Actually, this landmark appears in several places; in San Bernardino County at a rest stop about 40 miles north of Barstow, and as part of Camp Cady and the Mojave Road near there, and in Los Angeles County on Rt. 66 at the county line with San Bernardino County. This one doesn’t get a physical landmark, but has the same text as San Berdo if it did.  

The Mojave Road is a series of pathways that got Native Americans from the Colorado River to the Ocean.The path dictated by locations for water that was needed every 20  to 30 miles, so it was hardly straight. Whites used the Mojave Road as more of supply trail than for migration  You can still travel the desert section, which is a three day, 140 mile, four wheel drive journey.

This song, ‘Mojave Road’ was completed this day of posting. This lyric was kept sparse and then cut in half, the musical riff and chanted chorus carry the load and hopefully when recorded will provide the listener with the curiosity to know more about Chemehuevis people, a people nearly completely assimilated into other tribes and cultures. Even this short lyric melds….the birds bringing fourth the reds and yellows of a new dawn is told in a Cahuilla bird song.



MOJAVE ROAD       © Radio Flier Music



Chorus)  Hey, hey, hey, Mojave Road
               Hey, hey, hey, Mojave Road

Dawn will be warming
Falcon hunts the sky
Colors of the morning
He pulls back first eastern light

From the great Colorado
To the blue Pacific spray
The trail of the Paiute
The land of the Chemehuevis (chem-a-wa'-ve)





Plaque inscription: NO. 963 MOJAVE ROAD
Long ago, Mohave Indians used a network of pathways to cross the Mojave Desert.  In 1826 American trapper Jedediah Smith used their paths and became the first non-Indian to reach the California coast overland from mid America.  The paths were worked into a military wagon road in 1859.  This 'Mojave Road' remaind a major link between Los Angeles and points east until a railway crossed the desert in 1885.
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