What's in a name? Pretty much everything if you're the place known as Zzyzx, Calif.
For decades, perplexed motorists traveling the desert between Las Vegas and Los Angeles along Interstate 15 have tried pronouncing the odd word at the Zzyzx Road exit sign (it rhymes with "Isaacs"), most of them unaware that there really is a place that bears the strange name.
But four and a half miles down a lonesome winding road, you arrive at the quixotic settlement known as Zzyzx.
The sign for Zzyzx off Interstate 15 in California.
Originally called Soda Springs because of its natural spring water, in 1944 the area was renamed Zzyzx by Curtis Howe Springer, a radio evangelist who built his broadcast career while on the air at KDKA in Pittsburgh.
Discovering the spot, which, by then, was simply the remains of an 1860s Army post and railroad station, Springer decided the property was perfect for a hot springs resort that might attract more followers.
So he built a 60-room hotel, a church, a cross-shaped health spa with mineral baths, a radio broadcast studio (his program was carried by hundreds of stations around the world), a castle and even a private airstrip called the "Zyport."
Springer bottled the water from his springs to entice parched desert travelers, and even imported animals from all over the U.S. as another reason to stop at his Utopia in the Mojave.
As for the name Zzyzx, Springer wanted to create a term that would officially be the last, alphabetically, in the English language.
The lake that remains at Zzyzx, Calif., today.
For about 30 years, he actually pulled it off.
Asking listeners to send him donations to help support his special health cure concoctions (which supposedly were nothing more than vegetable juices), he managed to keep the resort alive until 1974.
But that's when then the dream came crashing down as the feds moved in to arrest Springer for alleged misuse of the land and violations of food and drug laws. They evicted his few hundred followers from the site, the government reclaimed the land and Zzyzx went bust.
Or did it?
Today, along the "Boulevard of Dreams," as Springer called the road leading into his private Eden, there is activity. Many of the buildings remain, and the small lake is teeming with marsh birds and other wildlife.
Since 1976, the Bureau of Land Management has allowed California State University to manage the Zzyzx property. A consortium of CSU campuses uses it as a desert studies center and students study the land, prospecting for fossils and analyzing its geology.
Diana Pomeroy, a grad student at Cal State Long Beach, recently stayed at the compound as part of a class field trip. "It was very peaceful," Pomeroy told AOL News. "The geology was fascinating, I was surprised by the number of different animals in the area, and it seemed like a genuine oasis in the middle of a harsh environment. And I always thought the name was weird, so it was interesting to learn more about the origin of it."
Ruins of the mineral baths at Zzyzx today.
The name Zzyzx lives on in pop culture, as well. The band Stavesacre had a song called "Zzyzx Scarecrow." Another band, Stone Sour, also had a song named for Zzyzx, plus there was an album from the band Zeromancer that paid homage to the name.
A 2006 horror film, "Zzyzx," is thought to be officially the "lowest grossing movie of all time" and just this year, the punk band Off With Their Heads named a tune in honor of it.
Springer died in Las Vegas in 1986 at the age of 90. But today, his strange name of Zzyzx still thrives -- on a road sign along Interstate 15, and in a once-bustling mineral springs resort, a desert Shangri La that's still very much intact.
Next time you approach that sign, maybe take a few minutes and get off the exit. Drive the few miles and take a look around. It's not a mirage.
And as hot as it gets in these parts, it's a cool little place.
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