Welcome to California City, the city that never quite was. Miles of dusty roads and ambition mark what was once intended to be a bustling metropolis of the Golden State.

Here, there are no houses but plenty of street signs with names like Aristotle Drive and Lincoln Boulevard, alongside telephone polls and signs advertising land for sale.

The city was to home around 400,000 people spread out among a downtown center and six satellite suburbs. There would even be a golf course and an artificial lake. To this day, California City remains the third largest city in California by land area.

Research in the 1950s suggested that LA was reaching its population ceiling with a postwar population boom for which it was unprepared. New communities, like California City, would need to help pick up the slack.

California City would avoid the same pitfalls. It would be built for purpose — a sprawling, self-sufficient desert city initially conceived for a population of 400,000.

Original planning and design for California City took about a year. This included the most minute and specific details, like the types of trees in the park and the colors of road signs.

Before taking on California City, Mendelsohn had developed the Arlanza Village neighborhood in Riverside and helped subdivide the desert community Hesperia, just outside LA. But California City marked a project of a far more ambitious scope than he had ever tackled before.

However, these plans have been put on hold for now. This is partly due to a ballot in November no longer going ahead, with the group planning on submitting an application to get the approval instead.

The heart of the city was initially intended to be on the eastern side, but the aquifer was under the western side. This western hub did eventually develop into California City’s population center — this is where Mendelsohn’s company paved roads and laid out water infrastructure for housing.

By incorporating, the development company could shift financial responsibility for city maintenance to the new city government. At the time of incorporation, California City was already $7.5 million in the hole. 

However, decades after its conception, the idea for the city has barely got off the ground. It appears that this vision for the future wasn’t quite clear enough.

There’s a long and complicated history of different companies buying the development, but another big factor in California City’s struggles was ultimately a lack of interest. A promised “Land Rush” of residents eager to buy lots in California City just never quite materialized.

Some of these concerns included its location in the middle of the desert and miles from the nearest highway or city. No one saw it as a practical place to live, so they decided not to move there.

As California City is a desert, the strong winds caused a sandstorm, immediately putting people off when they experienced it.

The main reason is that most people who brought land in California City hadn’t visited the area. They quickly realized that the land they had brought wasn’t the land they were promised.

This was how he got people to buy land and property in the area without them seeing it first, as they believed the city would be amazing.

The owners were fined by the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising. They had to repay more than $4 million to 14,000 people.

The land was eventually sold to a mining company. As a result, it was never developed as intended and was left as a practically empty space.

Today, the lake is green with algae and the waterfall has long since stopped flowing — a perfect visual metaphor for how the city never realized its ambitious promise.

This is why the park is a surprise to many people. It was thought practically impossible for anything green to grow there, which is one possible reason it put people off.

It also proves that if the same money and effort had been put into other aspects of the city, it could now be a thriving community rather than an empty wasteland.

However, there are plenty of things that it doesn’t have that its current inhabitants would probably find useful. These include a grocery store and a hotel in case anyone wants to stay in the area.

However, it is worth noting that there aren’t any plans to build the city into what it was meant to be. If people plan on buying property there, they will likely be living in the middle of nowhere and must drive for miles just to get some groceries.

Inexpensive housing made California City a popular place to retire, while others found it ideal for working at the nearby Edwards Air Force Base or in neighboring Mojave. Whatever the reasons, more people seem to be calling it home, and California City’s population appears to be on the rise. However, it still hasn’t reached anywhere near the dizzying heights envisioned 60 years ago.