Chiriaco Summit is a small town and travel stop located in the Colorado Desert of Southern California, 19 miles west of Desert Center. The Colorado Desert (yellow) showing Joshua Tree National Park The Colorado Desert is a large arid depression in southeastern California and northeastern Baja California in Mexico. ... Desert Center is a small town (population 968) located in the Colorado Desert of Southern California, between the cities of Blythe and Indio on Interstate 10. ...

Originally known as Shaver Summit, Chiriaco Summit is the high point of Box Canyon Road, a gravel road that paralleled the Bradshaw Trail from the Coachella Valley to Blythe. The land was purchased by Joe Chiriaco, an entrepreneur from Alabama. After traveling west to attend a college football game in the Rose Bowl in 1925, he decided to stay and found employment with the Los Angeles Bureau of Water and Power (now LADWP). He heard of plans to pave Box Canyon Road, so he purchased Shaver Summit and broke ground on a service station and general store. The hearsay proved true, and on August 15, 1933, the same day that cars began traveling over the brand-new U.S. Highway 60, Shaver Summit was open for business. Coachella Valley The Coachella Valley is an irrigated agricultural and recreational desert valley in southern California east of Los Angeles. ... Blythe is a doll created in 1972 by the now-defunct American toy company Kenner. ... A college football game between Colorado State University and the Air Force Academy. ... The Rose Bowl is an annual American college football game, usually played on January 1 (New Years Day) at the stadium of the same name in Pasadena, California. ... Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving 3. ... United States Highway 60 is an east-west United States highway, running 2,670 miles (4,300 km) from Virginia to Arizona. ...

Even more bustle came to the area when construction began on the Colorado River Aqueduct in the mid-1930s. This project of epic scale, which brought water to Riverside from Lake Havasu, tunneled through the mountains north of town. Joe worked on the project as a surveyor. Around this time, he met his wife, Ruth, a nurse from the Coachella Valley. Colorado River Aqueduct The Colorado River Aqueduct is a 242-mi (392 km) water conveyance in southern California in the United States. ... Lake Havasu is the reservoir behind Parker Dam on the Colorado river. ... Surveying is concerned with the application of mathematics and physics in obtaining accurate measurements for the determination of the position of points on the Earths surface. ... A nurse is a health care professional who is engaged in the practice of nursing. ... Coachella Valley The Coachella Valley is an irrigated agricultural and recreational desert valley in southern California east of Los Angeles. ...

In 1942, Joe had an unlikely visitor: General George S. Patton. Patton had the daunting task of training a million men to endure the harsh conditions of the Sahara Desert in northern Africa, and he had found the right place: 18,000 square miles of Mojave and Colorado Desert – the entire southeast corner of California and part of Arizona. The area would be known as the California/Arizona Maneuver Area (CAMA). Patton chose a site a mile east of Shaver Summit to establish the headquarters of his operation, Camp Young. During the time the base was active, Joe was visited by countless soldiers who were drawn “like bees to blossoms” to his well-stocked general store. Operations were conducted until 1944, when the Allies declared victory in the Sahara. George Smith Patton, Jr. ... The Sahara is the worlds second largest desert (second to Antarctica), over 9,000,000 km² (3,500,000 mi²), located in northern Africa and is 2. ...

In 1945, after Patton died in a freak automobile accident in Germany, the Chiriacos established a memorial to him at the Summit.

In 1958, a post office was established, and the town was renamed Chiriaco Summit. The construction of Interstate 10 in the 1960s, replacing U.S. Highway 60 and bypassing Box Canyon Road, meant that the Summit was no longer the only high point on the route, but the name stuck and remains to this day. Interstate 10 (abbreviated I-10 or in Texas IH-10) is the southernmost east-west, coast-to-coast interstate highway in the United States. ... United States Highway 60 is an east-west United States highway, running 2,670 miles (4,300 km) from Virginia to Arizona. ...

In 1989, the Bureau of Land Management and Patton’s estate expanded the Chiriacos' memorial and opened a museum on the site of Camp Young to honor Patton and interpret the history of the Desert Training Center. The centerpiece of the museum is “The Big Map,” a 5-ton jigsaw relief map created by LADWP depicting the area traversed by the Colorado River Aqueduct. The map, later used by Patton's staff, also illustrates the locations of the 11 training camps that comprised Patton’s mammoth operation. US BLM logo The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers Americas public lands, totaling approximately 261 million surface acres (1,056,229. ... The National Gallery in London, a famous museum. ...

The Chiriacos both died in 1996, and the businesses at Chiriaco Summit, which include a gas station, store, motel and airport, are now tended to by their son, Robert, and daughter, Margit.

In 1999, electricity from the power grid finally reached Chiriaco Summit, freeing the town from its dependence on diesel generators. Transmission towers Transmission lines in Lund, Sweden Electric power transmission, or more accurately Electrical energy transmission, is the second process in the delivery of electricity to consumers. ...