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Meanwhile, the desert, offering many things to many men, is still attracting increasing numbers of new settlers. Some, like Tucson Businessman Larry Sierck, who migrated from Davenport, Iowa five years ago and is still in his 30s, come for the opportunities of the fresh new land. Others, like William Bentham and his wife, who left Los Angeles when Bentham got ulcers in his city job, come for the healthy climate and the pleasant living. Today the ulcers are gone and the Mojave Desert location has turned into valuable property. "But, hell," he says, "if we sold, where would we go, Sudie and me? I don't want to go any place but here."
* One of the world's strangest streams, the Mojave (pronounced Mohahvee) is born in the snow melt of the San Bernardinos, disappears underground, here and there marking its strange northward course by popping unaccountably above the .surface of the sand. At one place, east of Victorville, Calif., it forms a subterranean reservoir as big as Tahoe, the state's largest lake.