Indian Wells Valley is an arid north-south basin in east-central California. In the geologic sense, it is a southern extension of Owens Valley to the north, with the recent volcanics of the Coso Range being the separator. It is defined by two major faults on both the east and west side of the valley, but unlike Owens Valley, it is bound by a third fault, the Garlock Fault (within the El Paso Mountains) to the south. This valley is part of the northwesternmost Mojave Desert plant community and ecoregion.
The largest city in the valley is Ridgecrest. Other locations include Inyokern, Indian Wells, and communities associated with the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, the primary industry in the valley. California State Route 14 and US Highway 395 are the main transportation corridors through the valley.
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“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“I see before me now a traveling army halting,
Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of summer,
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising high,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)