Poking Around in Yuma California

A Journey to the Center of the World (Almost)
by Craig Mains

While visiting Yuma, Corbin and I did a short day trip that took us to the only erg in the US---the Algodones Dunes west of Yuma in California. According to Wikipedia, the definition of an erg is a broad, flat area of desert, covered by wind-blown sand with little or no vegetative cover and that covers more than 48 square miles of which at least 20 percent is sand-covered. There are many other areas of dunes in the US but they are not extensive enough to be considered an erg and are referred to as dune fields. The Sandhills of Nebraska are extensive enough to be considered an erg except they are mostly covered by vegetation.

A satellite view of the Algodones Dunes from Google Earth. The erg is about 45 miles long and about six miles wide. It is oriented in a northwest/southeast direction based on the prevailing winds. Yuma is in the bottom right of the image. The Colorado River snakes across the upper right part of the image. The agricultural land on the left side of the image is the Imperial Valley of California.

The sand that forms the dunes is believed to be sediment left behind by the Colorada River from a time when it flowed in a different course, forming a large lake in what is now the Imperial Valley. When the river changed course, the lake evaporated, exposing the deposited sediments, which were carried east by the wind, forming the dunes. The dune system is moving southeast at a rate of about one foot per year.

The Algodones Dunes were at one time a thin, northern extension of the very much larger erg called the Gran Desierto de Altar (2,200 square miles), which is mostly within the Mexican state of Sonora. It is now separated from the larger erg by irrigated farm lands in Mexico.

Three human-built structures cross the erg: Interstate 8 and the All-American Canal both cross at the southern end, near the Mexican border. California State Route 78 (shown above) crosses further north.

The All-American Canal is an 82-mile canal that delivers water from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley. It is considered to be the largest irrigation canal in the world with a maximum flow rate of 26,155 cubic feet per second.

The dunes south of CA Route 78 are managed by the Bureau of Land Management as the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreational Area and are open to off-road vehicles of various types. The dunes north of route 78, a much smaller area, are managed as the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness and vehicles are banned. Environmental advocacy groups have lobbied to ban vehicles in a larger portion of the dunes, while offroad vehicle enthusiasts have lobbied to have a bigger area opened to ORVs. The dunes are home to some unusual insects not found elsewhere in the US, although they may be present in the Mexican section of the larger erg.

The strip of vehicles in the middle distance are campers and RVs of the many people who come to the dunes to run their dune buggies and other off-road vehicles. Most of the recreational activity occurs in the winter months when the temperatures are more bearable.

Because the dunes are less than 300 miles from Los Angeles they have been used as the setting for numerous films and TV shows. The mountains in the background are the Chocolate Mountains.

On the way to the dunes we spotted this building from I-8 and a sign for the Center of the World. On the way back we stopped by to see what it was all about.

The Official Center of the World is a personal project of Jacques-Andre Istel and his wife Felicia. It is a "mixture of the serious and the whimsical."

Jacques-Andre Istel moved to the US from France with his family in 1940 at the age of 11. He later worked as an investment banker, and served in the US Marine Corps during the Korean War. He is most well known for popularizing recreational parachuting and has sometimes been called the "father of skydiving." He owned and operated a series of schools that trained thousands of students in parachuting as well operating a company that produced and sold parachuting equipment. In the 1980s he sold his businesses and moved to the desert. He and his wife Felicia have been working on the History of Humanity in Granite, and other associated projects, ever since.

Pictured above are the Istels, Felicia Lee on the left and Jacques-Andre Istel on the right. Mr. Istel is the mayor of the town of Felicity, which is named after his wife. The town has a population of two, shown above. Felicity is about eight miles west of Yuma.

We did not have the honor of meeting the mayor during our visit but we were greeted by Felicity. The facility is officially open from Thanksgiving to Easter. The rest of the year is usually too hot to be outside very long, although visitors are welcome to look around on their own (and pay a fee on the honor system). Although it was the week of Thanksgiving when we visited, we were not asked to pay the full entrance fee. I remember paying $2 each. I believe if we had paid the full fee ($5 at the time of our visit) we would have been given a tour. Instead we just wandered around on our own. There were maybe five or six other people there.

The photo is from www.HistoryInGranite.org.

The center piece of the project is the History of Humanity carved into more than 700 red granite panels, with more than 1000 engraved illustrations. The panels are arranged into long rows referred to as monuments. Currently, there are 20 monuments. The topics covered by the History of Humanity monuments include: Time Keeping, Energy Use and Innovation, Languages, Navigation, World Regions, Evolution of Mankind, Dynasties, Philosophy, and Numbers (among other topics). With regard to his credentials for writing the history of humanity, Mr. Istel has said, "You might ask: What qualifications do I have to write a history of humanity? Well, I would ask: What were my qualifications to design parachutes when I was a banker?"

While Mr. Istel hopes the human race will endure longer than the stone, he apparently has enough doubts to embark on the project.

In the center of the History of Humanity monuments is this octagonal structure they call the Felicity Stone. It has the same message written in six different languages. The message in English reads: "On behalf of the people of the world, this monument is designed as a key for visitors of the far distant future to understand our writings." Besides English, the message is written in Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Latin, Sanskrit, and Classical Chinese. Two panels are blank awaiting the selection of the final languages. The Istels believe it is the Rosetta Stone of our era.

The photo is from www.HistoryInGranite.org.

This eye-catching church, which is prominently visible from I-8, was completed in 2008. The design is based on a church in Brittany. Mr. Istel believed that a church should be built upon a hill so, starting in 2001, he had 150,000 tons of earth trucked in to build a 35-feet-tall hill. It does not appear that the church is used for regular church services and Mr. Istel has said that he is not particularly religious. It can be rented for weddings and other events.

A view of the History of Humanity in Granite monuments from the hill that the church sits upon.

The other main attraction is the center of world. Within this pyramid of pink granite is a disk marking the center of the world. For an extra fee ($3 at the time of our visit), one can get access to the interior of the pyramid and place one's foot on the disk marking the official center of the world. The visitor also gets a certificate verifying they were at the center of the world. We did not choose to do so, so we can't say we actually made it to the center of the world, but we were pretty close to it.

Of course, there is no scientific basis for this location being the center of the earth rather than any other random place. It has been semi-officially recognized as the center of the earth, however, by Imperial County, CA and the National Geographic Institute of France.

One of the other features was the Maze of Honor, the basic structure of which was completed in 2018. It allows anyone to post whatever message or image they would like to memorialize for people in the future to view. The message, which can be text, a photo, artwork, etc. is laser etched into a 12 inch by 12 inch sheet of black granite that is then attached to the wall of the maze. The cost is $1000 per square. Although the walls of the maze look entirely blank in this photo, there was one section of the maze where at least a few hundred messages and images had been posted.

I had to admire the tenacity of this little plant that had sprouted in the narrow crack between two pieces of sidewalk in the Maze of Honor. It was probably only about four or five inches high and eight or ten inches across. For anything to survive in an area that only gets about three inches of rain a year and occasionally gets temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit is amazing. It was on the north side of one of the maze walls so probably avoided being in direct sun much of the time.

The Felicity sundial incorporates a 3D bronze modeled on the arm of God from the Michelangelo fresco "The Creation of Adam." The finger points towards the church on the hill.

This spiral staircase was once part of the original 1889 structure of the Eiffel Tower. Mr. Istel obtained it in an auction. I-8 is in the background.

That's a big question mark in my mind as well as it seems we are well into the process of destroying ourselves.

December 2019

 

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