Up Above: The Geography of Suburban Sprawl in Southern California’s Antelope Valley

Matt Jalbert

From Farms to Bombs: The Air Force Discovers the Antelope Valley

IN 1933, THE ARMY AIR FORCE OPENED MUROC BASE on the vast flat playas of Rosamond and Rogers Dry Lakes. Later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, the installation came to encompass some 470 square miles [note #17] of the northern Antelope Valley and provided the basis for some of the regions’s biggest economic booms—and busts. The taupe desert floor also provided the endless backdrop to innumerable photographs (figs. 6, 7, 7.5) of hypersexy supersonic military aircraft published in Aviation Week and Space Technology—the Playboy of the military aviation set. Edwards Air Force base grew most rapidly after World War II when the development of jet propulsion and national security paranoia made the huge, isolated site a choice spot for military aircraft testing. The dry lakes’ forgiving natural runways made Edwards an ideal test site for experimental aircraft, providing isolation from the prying eyes of communist spies. Nearly uninterrupted good flying weather, and the ease with which those sexy photographs of airborne jets were made in the clear air, sedimented the Air Force’s love affair with Edwards.

The 1950s saw a fundamental shift in the Valley’s economy. Groundwater overdraft, encroaching urbanization, and inflated land prices made irrigated farming increasingly difficult. Rising energy prices made unprofitable the pumping of water from deep wells for alfalfa irrigation. Cultivation in the Valley peaked at 99,000 acres in 1952 [note #18] and steadily declined from there, but the bounties of a military aircraft industry made up for the loss of agriculture in orders of magnitude. Not only had Edwards Air Force Base become a locus point of massive military investment, so too did the airport at what was to become Air Force Plant 42.

Comprising 9.1 square miles within the city limits of Palmdale, Plant 42 was originally the site of a Works Projects Administration airport. [note #19] Sold by Los Angeles County to the Federal government in 1954, the site became a second major locus of military aircraft investment in the Valley. Contracts with Northrup, Lockheed, Grumman, and other major aircraft companies brought huge, well-funded projects to the region, considerably boosting the local economy.

Population concurrently boomed. From 1950 to 1960, the population of the entire north Los Angeles County area quadrupled to 64,000. Lancaster, home to many of the base’s employees, saw its population increase eight-fold in that decade, from 3,600 to over 29,000. Palmdale grew from 2,700 in 1950 to 11,522 in 1960. [note #20] Agricultural employment dropped to 5% of the Valley’s workforce, while the combined operations of Edwards Air Force Base and Plant 42 employed 40% of Valley workers. [note #21] The Antelope Valley’s transformation into a hub of military aircraft design, testing, and production marked a new regional economic mode. No longer an isolated rural farm community with few ties to the larger world, it was the very center of the nation’s fledgling military jet aircraft industry. Its fortunes rested on the hostilities and paranoia of a country engaged in cold war. Washington, D.C. suddenly held key relevance to the lives of Antelope Valley residents; its remote powers could bring forth directives on which the Valley’s prosperity burgeoned. Only, before 1957, few imagined that the distant Pentagon could also crush the Antelope Valley.

NEXT | Sputnik Goes Up, the Antelope Valley Comes Down

© Matt Jalbert 1995–2002