Zzyzx, CA

Soda Springs, once an oasis for indigenous travelers through the Mojave desert, and then for explorers and settlers. Later used as a trading outpost, an army post, a railroad station, and for salt mining. The area was abandoned for a period until, in 1944, radio evangelist and DIY healer Curtis Howe Springer renamed the place Zzyx Springs and set up a health spa and spiritual retreat there. 

  Curtis Howe Springer

 

Importing labour from LA's skid-row, he built a sixty-room hotel, a church, a cross-shaped spa with mineral baths, a radio broadcast studio, a private airstrip dubbed "Zyport" and several other buildings which included a castle. Many of the homeless labourers stayed. 

He used the land until 1974, when he was arrested and imprisoned for squatting and probably selling bulk drugs, and the land was reclaimed by the government. Most of the buildings remain in various states of disrepair, and some are used for environmental research by state universities.