Sources of surface water are extremely rare in the Mojave Desert, as might be expected, and a perennial creek is anomalous indeed. Unsurprisingly, this occurrence was of extreme importance both for wildlife and humans. The source of the water, which causes an incongruous lush green watercourse along this otherwise unprepossessing desert canyon, is groundwater out of the sediments filling Lanfair Valley to the west. A fault zone through the Piute Range, along Piute Creek, provides a conduit for the water, which emerges at Piute Spring in the upper canyon.
Piute Creek lies on the old Mojave Road, which connected southern California to the Colorado River in the 1860s. ((The Mojave Road was later occasionally called the Old Government Road, and both names have been applied indifferently to various alignments over the years.) Fort Piute was built here in 1867 to protect the mail riders using the old Mojave Road. However, soon after the fort opened the road was rerouted through a lower pass a couple of miles south, where it remains today. The fort then closed, less than six months after opening. Only stone foundations are left, plus the remnants of a stone corral. Please stay off the foundations to help preserve what's left.
Completion of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe transcontinental railroad, about 15 miles south, in 1885 drew the remaining traffic off the Mojave Road. (This railroad remains in use today and is now part of the BNSF system.) A few homesteaders persisted as late as the 1950s, and some ruins downstream from the fort date from this era. However, Piute Creek is now an ecological preserve and remains sacred to the local tribes.
