About Nipton
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Nipton, California is an historic Mojave Desert town having its roots in the nineteenth century mining and ranching industries of the western United States. The coming of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad established Nippeno Camp as a town-site in 1905. The consolidation of the SP, LA & SL RR with the Union Pacific Railroad, circa 1910, prompted renaming the town-site and rail station as NIPTON, a continuing California place name. In the 1980’s the California East Mojave Desert became nationally recognized as a sensitive and threatened environment with the designation of the East Mojave National Scenic Area. The passage of the California Desert Protection Act in 1994 brought into existence Mojave National Preserve, recreated from the former EMNSA. Nipton, located in Ivanpah Valley on its northern boundary, has thus become an enduring gateway community to Mojave National Preserve, providing visitor information and a range of hospitality services.
Hotel Nipton and Nippeno Camp & Conference Center now welcomes a worldly set of travelers, individuals and groups, to the open vistas and relaxed atmosphere of the Mojave Desert Experience. The Nipton Trading Post provides a range of supplies and information expressly suited to the desert visitation including a wide array of books and maps. Knowledgeable hospitality services are personalized to individual interests and needs. While isolated from the frantic pace of the metropolitan life, a variety of recreational opportunities lie within easy range of Nipton. The entire Southern Nevada/ Las Vegas scene is a short hours drive over the horizon to the North. Water sports including swimming, boating and fishing beckon on Lake Mojave just one half hour's drive to the East. Out of doors adventure and recreations of all descriptions are to be found in the 6 million acres of California Desert National Parks to the South and West.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AND CREDITS In attempting to capture and project the particular verve of Nipton and its surrounding Mojave Desert, the picture is truly worth one thousand words. It is in this sense that we at Nipton wish to offer our acknowledgements and thanks to the several contributors who have provided very special images to help convey the messages intended in this website. First we wish to acknowledge Jennie McDade for her work in the creation a portrait of Ivanpah Valley, the home of Nipton. This work was done in the spring of 2004 and has been featured in a recent exhibit entitled “Sense of Place” in the Nido Gallery, located on the landward side of Moss Landing – Santa Cruz. Ms. McDade is a popular artist from the Santa Cruz area, who also teaches art classes at U.C.S.C. She has kindly granted Nipton permission to use the portrait on our website, and we have adapted it as our thematic expression of place to help project to our viewers “where and who we are”. Thank you again Jennie, we hope to see you again soon. We also wish to acknowledge and thank CeCe Fabbro, of Scarsdale N.Y., for her contribution of the image of the Desert Tortoise as shown above on our “About Nipton” page. No descriptive account of Ivanpah Valley would be complete without a really good picture of this endearing creature that makes his home in the same place we make ours. The up-front and in-your’s-face image, CeCe has taken conveys volumes on this threatened species cohabitating Ivanpah with us. Thank you CeCe, please visit again soon. Gus Vopalensky is a professional photographer who lives in Victorville CA and has been specializing in photographs of desert scenes for several decades. He is an occasional visitor and guest at Nipton and has kindly consented to allow us to use a number of his images to show aspects of Nipton and what it has to offer. A variety of his desert scenes postcards can be purchased in the Nipton Trading Post. We wish to thank Gus’s interest and willingness to incorporate his work into our own. He and his family are always welcome back to Nipton. Ron Borst, a first time visitor to the Mojave Desert from Kansas City and an amateur photographer snapped a shot of Hotel Nipton which just happened to capture an essence that we decided said a lot about our character and INSIGNIA. We have used his picture on our Home Page as our showcase image. Thank you, Ron, for contributing this work. Jule-Anne Patrick, a frequent visitor from Lenexa, Kansas has shown us a dramatic view of the nearby Colorado River and Lake Mojave that we wanted to share with our cyber-visitors. Thanks, Julie, for the picture. Water in the desert always looks good. Last, but not least, Roxanne Marie Lang, my wife and partner for some twenty years has been my constant support, contributor and mainstay in keeping Nipton alive and on a track toward the future viability of this relic desert community. Many of the photographic images on this website are of her making. Thank you, Roxanne, for everything. Gerald (YY)
Freeman
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