Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert.

The desert I'm in tonight is the Mojave, the Mojave High Desert south of Barstow, north of the Salton Sea.

The Spanish pronunciation Mojave

and its various spellings means

beside the water.

Somewhere along the way it came to mean the desert west of the Colorado River on either side of the mostly underground Mojave River,

which begins in the snow melt of the San Bernardino Mountains.

Mojave is from the human words.

Ahma Cove.

Which is where the Yuma people have lived for almost a thousand years on the Colorado River, roughly between today's Fort Mojave and Yuma.

And throughout the Colorado Delta, in today's Mexico, atop the Gulf of California, the Sea of Cortez.

Both Fort Mojave and Fort Yuma were built by the U.S. Army to stop raids against white travelers by the Mojave tribes,

which rightly saw the incursion as an invasion.

The Mojave suit for peace after losing a decades-long advantage, and today many thousands of Mojave and other human peoples live throughout the California

and Arizona deserts.

The names of places are rich with meaning.

Even when a town or a county is just named after the real estate developer or some state legislator,

over time the name becomes a crucial clue to the history of a place, the scandals, the disasters, the rise and the fall.

Many places in the Southwest retain their old names, or at least are named after a tribe.

Mojave and Yuma are examples.

Washoe, Tahoe, Taos, Apache Junction, Navajo County, Winamucka, Tucson to Tuchum Carey, to Hachapida Tonapah.

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