Earp, California

Earp, California is an unincorporated townsite in San Bernardino County in the Sonoran Desert close to the California/Arizona state line at the Colorado River in Parker Valley.

It was named for famed Old West lawman Wyatt Earp who with his common-law wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, lived part-time in the area beginning in 1906. Earp staked more than 100 copper and gold mining claims near the base of the Whipple Mountains.

They bought a small cottage in nearby Vidal and lived there during the fall, winter and spring months of 1925 – 1928, while he worked his "Happy Days" mines in the Whipple Mountains a few miles north. It was the only permanent residence they owned the entire time they were married. They spent the winters of his last years working the claims but lived in Los Angeles during the summers, where Wyatt died on January 13, 1929.

Though the town was never incorporated, the post office near Earp's mining claims at the eastern terminus of Highway 62 near Parker, AZ was renamed "Wyatt Earp, California" after Earp's death in 1930 with a ZIP code of 92242. For amusement only there is a tiny cemetery showing the fake grave of Wyatt Earp.

The post office is more than 220 miles (350 km) from the county seat in San Bernardino, California is further than any other in the county. The entire region on the California side falls under area code 760.

Unofficial alternate names of the area are listed as Drenna and Drennan.

Famous quotes containing the word california:

    The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)