Desert Center is a small census-designated place in the Colorado Desert of Riverside County, California, situated at the junction of Interstate 10 and State Route 177, roughly halfway between Phoenix and Los Angeles. As of the 2020 census, the community had a population of about 200, with a median age well into the sixties, reflecting its character as a remote desert outpost rather than a growing town. Indio lies to the west and Blythe to the east, each a considerable drive across open desert. The community was founded in 1921 by Stephen A. Ragsdale, known as "Desert Steve," who established a roadside stop after he and his family were stranded in the Chuckwalla Valley. His service station, café, and cabins offered the only fuel and lodging for miles in either direction, and Desert Center grew into a modest traveler's oasis along what became the main route between the coast and the desert. During World War II, the area was part of the vast Desert Training Center used to prepare troops for combat in North Africa. Desert Center's remote setting defines it. The Chuckwalla Mountains rise nearby, Joshua Tree National Park lies just to the north, and the surrounding valley holds relics of the region's mining and railroad past, including the former Eagle Mountain iron mine. In the 1980s, jojoba cultivation brought a brief agricultural wave to the brackish, sandy soil, and today the Chuckwalla Valley Raceway draws motorsports enthusiasts to a professional-grade track on the community's edge. Life here is quiet, spare, and self-sufficient. Residents value the isolation, the dark desert skies, and the proximity to public land, while services, schools, and employment are reached in Indio, Blythe, and the Coachella Valley. Desert Center remains, in essence, what it has always been: a small human presence at the crossroads of a vast and beautiful desert.