I used to go to Devil's Punch Bowl all the time when I was a kid. Loved it. I thought the A.V. was a great place to grow up, and I do miss it, although having been back there many times since moving to Ohio, I know that the big growth "boom" that was predicted for so many years finally happened, which certainly changed the landscape (and not for the better). Palmdale was a sleepy little town of 10,000 when we first moved there in August 1962. Now it is over 100,000, and kind-of merges with Lancaster and Quartz Hill, and has become more of an overflow for L.A. (unfortunately). I still miss it nonetheless.

CaT

If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracle of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.
- Lyndon Johnson, on signing the Wilderness Act into law (1964)