Daggett
—  Unincorporated town  —
Daggett Location within the state of California
Coordinates: 34°51′48″N 116°53′17″W / 34.86333°N 116.88806°W / 34.86333; -116.88806Coordinates: 34°51′48″N 116°53′17″W / 34.86333°N 116.88806°W / 34.86333; -116.88806
Country	United States
State	California
County	San Bernardino
Founded	1883
Population (2000)
• Total	200
Time zone	Pacific (PST) (UTC-8)
• Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC-7)
ZIP codes	92327
Area code(s)	760

Daggett is an unincorporated town located in San Bernardino County, California in the United States. The town is located on Interstate 40 ten miles (16 km) East of Barstow. The town has a population of about 200. The ZIP code is 92327 and the community is inside area code 760.

History [edit]

The town was originally founded in the 1880s just after the discovery of silver in area mines. In 1882, the Southern Pacific Railroad from Mojave was being completed in the area and it was thought that a good name for the town would be Calico Junction. But this name would be too confusing since it was right next to Calico, where the silver was uncovered. It was decided to name the city after then Lieutenant Governor of California, John Daggett, during the Spring of 1883.

For two years, it was the terminal of the twenty-mule team run from Death Valley, but after one of their swampers, William Pitt was lynched, the Pacific Borax Company made the terminal in Mojave.

Not only did silver define Daggett's history, but borax was also important to the city's economy. This borax was being mined, around the turn of the century, out of the Calico Hills nearby. This operation required many more laborers to come to the city to help. The Borate and Daggett Railroad was built to haul borax ore from the mines up in the hills down to Daggett.

Airport [edit]

Daggett is the location of Daggett Airport. The facility is a general aviation airport serving the Barstow area. It is also the regional weather information center. The airport was built as a modification center for the Douglas A-20 Havoc bomber aircraft that were sent to Russia as part of the Lend-Lease program during World War II.

Schools [edit]

Daggett is part of the Silver Valley Unified School District. The Silver Valley High School is located at 35484 Daggett/Yermo Rd, Daggett, CA 92327, (760) 254-2963.

Demographics [edit]

As of 2003, 1000 people lived in Daggett, though nearly 1500 live in the surrounding area. Only about 200 people actually live in the town. The town's elevation is approximately 2,000 feet (610 m).

Solar power generation [edit]

The worlds first commercial solar power plants, SEGS I (built in 1984) and SEGS II (built in 1985) of the SEGS network are located in Daggett.^[1]

Daggett was also home to a unique solar thermal energy plant named Solar One, a pilot project which was operational from 1982 to 1986. The plant used mirror-like heliostats to aim sunlight at a collecting sphere located on a solar power tower (a type of solar furnace), through which oil flowed. The large quantity of sunlight reflected on the sphere superheated the oil, which was then used to create steam for power generation. The plant was upgraded in 1995 as part of the Solar Two project. Solar Two substituted molten salt compounds instead of oil as an energy storage medium.

During calibration of the power plant's thousands of heliostats, a ball of glowing light was sometimes seen in the nearby area. This effect was caused by the heliostats focusing sunlight onto a specific point. As the intensity of the light increased, it reflected off dust in the desert air. This phenomenon was sometimes seen by passersby on the nearby highways 40 and 15.^{[citation needed]}

Solar Two was decommissioned in 1999, and the facility was converted in 2001 into a gamma-ray astronomy telescope. The facility is now known as CACTUS (Converted Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope Using Solar-2).^[2] CACTUS, which is operated by the University of California, Davis but owned by Southern California Edison,^[3] operated from late 2004 until late 2005.^[4]

On November 25, 2009, the Solar Two tower was demolished^[5] The site was levelled by Southern California Edison. All heliostats and other hardware were removed. Plans are in place to develop a training facility for Southern California Edison to train personnel on construction and maintenance of high power transmission lines and towers.^{[citation needed]}

Rail freight [edit]

Rail freight is provided by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad on the BNSF Needles Subdivision. Train service is very frequent on the line as this line goes to Chicago.

Trivia [edit]

Daggett appears in The Cardigans' video for "Favorite Game."

References [edit]

Further reading [edit]

• Van Dyke, Dix; Wild, Peter (editor) (1997). Daggett: Life in a Mojave Frontier. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 183. ISBN 978-0801856259 OCLC 36178998, 605563047 and 658057160 (print and on-line)
  • Reviewed by: Steeples, Douglas (April 1, 2000, copyright Summer 2008). "Daggett: Life in a Mojave Frontier Town." Montana: The Magazine of Western History. Montana Historical Society. OCLC 4894630759 and Yardley, Jonathan. (December 17, 1997). "Desert Solitaire; A Quirky Chronicle of Life in the Mojave". The Washington Post. Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive. Both retrieved February 03, 2013 from HighBeam Research

External links [edit]

Inland Empire portal

• http://www.ieesocal.org/review3.html^{[dead link]} - Information on the SolarI and II power plants

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