Desert View Tower

In the early 1920s the trip from San Diego to the Imperial Valley meant grinding up and over the steep, boulder-strewn In-Ko-Pah grade, and Bert Vaughn saw a chance to make travelers pause at the top. Beginning around 1922 he set crews to work stacking local stone into a tower on the rim, and over the next several years, with additions stretching into the 1920s and beyond, it rose to about seventy feet and five stories. He dedicated it to the pioneers and the highway and railroad builders who had opened up this hard country.

For decades the tower anchored a little roadside complex, with a restaurant and bar across the way on the old road, catching the trade of everyone motoring across Old Highway 80. When Interstate 8 later took over the through traffic, the tower could have faded like so many roadside attractions, but it hung on as a beloved oddity, and today the winding interior stairs still climb past a small museum to an observation deck that opens onto miles of desert.

The real surprise sits just across the parking lot. In the 1930s Merle Ratcliffe, an engineer left jobless by the Depression, looked at the enormous granite boulders scattered across the hillside and started carving. Working the natural shapes of the rock, he coaxed out snakes coiling around the stone, lizards, a crouching creature that reads as a frog or a skull depending on the light, and a whole menagerie hidden among the boulders for a sharp-eyed visitor to find.

The result is what the National Register calls a folk-art environment: not a formal sculpture park but one person's vision carved directly into the landscape, a little rough, a little whimsical, and completely of its place. Half the fun is the treasure hunt, wandering the paths and squeezing through gaps in the rock to spot the next carved animal, while the giant boulders themselves form caves and tunnels that kids love to explore.

From the high points of the boulder pile you also get one of the best views back at the tower itself, framed against the sky, with the desert falling away behind it. It is the combination that makes the stop special, a hand-built stone landmark and a hand-carved rock garden sharing one wild little corner of the mountains.

Desert View Tower belongs to a vanishing breed: the independent roadside attraction that grew up to catch passing motorists before the interstates rerouted everyone. Old Highway 80 was the main southern route across the country, and stops like this one gave travelers a reason to break the drive, stretch their legs, and take in a view they would remember. Most of that generation of attractions is long gone.

This one endured because it was strange enough, and well enough loved, to keep people turning off the freeway. The little museum inside is packed with desert relics, old highway curiosities, and local history, the kind of jumble that rewards a slow browse, and the small gift shop at the base carries on the tradition of the roadside stop. Its listing on the National Register in 1980 recognized both the tower and Boulder Park as historic folk art, helping ensure this odd, wonderful place stays standing on its ridge.

The tower sits right at the In-Ko-Pah exit off Interstate 8, only a few minutes east of Jacumba Hot Springs, so it is an easy and rewarding pull-off on the drive between San Diego and the desert. A short access road climbs from the freeway to the parking area between the tower and the boulders. There is a modest admission to climb the tower and roam the grounds, and because it is privately run, its hours can shift with the seasons, so it is worth going earlier in the day and not in the peak of summer heat.

Give yourself an hour to climb the tower, browse the museum, and then really explore the boulder park next door, watching your footing on the uneven rock and keeping an eye on children near the drop-offs. Bring water, since there is little shade up here, and pick a clear day so the view stretches all the way across the Imperial Valley. It is exactly the kind of quirky, human-scale landmark that a good road trip is made of, still doing the job it was built for a century ago: giving travelers a reason to stop and look.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.