The Antelope Valley - Is It Really Just Tumbleweeds and Trailer Parks?

There seems to be a prevailing view in Los Angeles that Palmdale, Lancaster and the Antelope Valley are a conglomerate hick-ville, not worth visiting, full of meth-labs and project housing. In this sprawling desert region north of Los Angeles (but still in L.A. County), there certainly are project homes and there is Section 8 housing. There are hicks. And undoubtedly there are meth-labs. But this is true for every part of L.A., isn't it?

What is it about the Antelope Valley that inspires the kind of ridicule and stereotyping that are now rampant?

The LA Weekly recently ran a captivating story on a housing regulations crackdown occurring in the eastern Antelope Valley - a relatively remote area, even for the Antelope Valley. The article referred to the residents of this area as "desert rats." In fact, this term was used in the title (L.A. County's War on Desert Rats).

The individuals and couples featured in the article were presented as "iconoclasts" and as people estranged from "normal ways of living." Of course, there are people of the Antelope Valley that fit this description, yet the article was so insistent on painting a picture of the Antelope Valley as a netherworld that I thought I was reading an article about Alabama written by a New Yorker or someone from Tokyo.

The backward, wayward and odd elements of life in the Antelope Valley were the sole focus of any comment on the society of Littlerock and Palmdale. Regrettably, the article plays only to the vague and rather depressing view that L.A. residents seem to hold of the Antelope Valley.

The Antelope Valley deserves some of its reputation, yet does not deserve to be castigated as the backwards stepchild of L.A. County. Much of the reality of life in the Antelope Valley falls out of the commonly held, stereotypical view of this desert area.

A number of cities and towns are arrayed along the southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert, the largest of them being Palmdale andLancaster- two cities of more than 150,000 residents each. Rosamond, Littlerock, Lake Hughes, Lake Elizabeth and Mojave make up a majority of the rest of the Antelope Valley, bringing the total population to more than 500,000.

These 500,000 people are sometimes found in track housing, gated communities and 70s suburban-style neighborhoods. Some of them live on farms. Some of them live in drab apartment complexes.

The mixture of housing reflects the rapid and rather unplanned growth of the Antelope Valley over the past 40 years. Once, the Antelope Valley was a sparsely populated desert area dedicated mainly to farming. Now it is a set of cities with diverse populations of class, race and interest.

Yes, it is a desert area. Yes, there are ranches and farms. But there is also a strong presence of industry with Boeing and Lockheed Martin doing work in Palmdale and Lancaster. The Antelope Valley is also home to Edwards Airforce Base, so it is not uncommon to meet people wearing NASA baseball caps trying not to look too much like engineers.

The Antelope Valley is not an easy place to figure out, really, because it is such a hodgepodge of distinctly contrasting parts. It's easy to find the small-town flair of parades, street-cart races and farmers markets. And you won't see any skyscrapers. But you will hear a sonic boom from time to time. You can get tickets to Natalie Cole and Fergie concerts in Lancaster, for what it's worth.

You can visit an art museum.

The politics tend to take a conservative bent, and you can see horses on the street once in a while. There are, certainly, tumbleweeds. But the Antelope Valley isn't just one big trailer park.

There is more to it than that.