At Mountain Spring, a supply station just beyond the summit, we crossed into Imperial County. From this point the road was built by popular subscription and a wonderful road it is. It winds around the great precipices, which rise far above or drop hundreds of feet below, and crosses yawning canyons, yet it maintains easy grades and avoids difficult turns to an extent seldom seen under such conditions. The smooth wide surface offers temptations to careless drivers and despite the perfect engineering several accidents have happened on the road. A car went off the grade shortly before our passing and a collision occurred near the summit on the following day.
At the foot of the grade we encountered the sandy wash leading down into the valley. For several miles we fairly wallowed through heavy sand, the car pitching and rolling like a boat on a rough sea. Had the sand been an inch deeper—so it seemed—we should have been hopelessly stalled—a fate which often overtakes a car departing from the beaten track. We scrambled along with steaming engine and growling gears and were glad indeed when a forlorn little ranch-house hove in sight. A windmill tower indicated water and we took occasion to replenish our supply.
Coyote Wells shows on the map as a post office, but our conception of a village was dashed as we approached the spot by the tiny clapboard shack which greeted our sand-bleared vision. A rudely painted sign, "General Store, Gasoline and Oil," apprised us of the chief excuse for the existence of Coyote Wells. The wells are there, too; eleven feet under the burning sands is an unlimited supply of water. We paused a few minutes and looked around us—which we had scarcely done before, the plunging car and the clouds of sand driven by a forty-mile wind being quite enough to distract our attention. In every direction stretched the yellow sands, dotted with sage brush and cacti. Some of the latter were in bloom, their delicate blossoms, yellow, carmine, and pink, lending a pleasing bit of color to the drab monotone of the landscape. And yet we were told that this sandy waste needs only water to metamorphose it into green fields such as we should see a little later.
A few miles beyond Coyote Wells the road had been oiled, but it had broken into chuck-holes and become unmercifully rough. It was not until we entered the confines of the cultivated lands a short distance from Dixieland that we found a fine boulevard, which continued for several miles. Dixieland is the western outpost of the Valley, situated in the edge of the present irrigation district. It is a substantially built village, most of the business houses being of brick and cement. The coming of the new railroad, already within a few miles, will probably bring a great boom for Dixieland.