In 1887, the California Southern Railroad, which later became the Santa Fe Railroad, completed tracks through the area and established a town site with a small depot measuring 15 feet wide and 20 feet long. The railroad named the town after Hesperus, the Greek god of the west.
To attract new residents to the area, Hesperia was promoted in pamphlets distributed across the country. The pamphlets described Hesperia as the Omaha of the West, which referenced Omaha, Nebraska, the fastest growing city in the United States during the 1880s.
By the time the depot was completed, Joseph and Robert Widney had purchased the township and formed the Hesperia Land and Water Company. The Widney brothers built a large hotel and laid out a plan similar to the city of Ontario, which was designed by the Chaffey brothers.
Hesperia grew slowly, but its location and clear visibility made it a suitable site for one of the few manned and lighted airstrips in the High Desert during the 1920s. It was reported that Charles Lindberg made a brief stop there in the late 1920s for minor repairs following his solo flight across the Atlantic.
The construction of U.S. Routes 66, 91 and 395 in the 1940s, followed by Interstate 15 in the late 1960s, helped develop many areas of the Mojave Desert, including Hesperia. In 1954, land developer M. Penn Phillips and his silent financial partner, the boxing legend Jack Dempsey, purchased 23,000 acres, which is approximately 36 miles. They divided the land into 30,000 parcels, making it one of the largest land sales in California history. To attract new residents, Phillips built the Hesperia Inn and a golf course, which drew a variety of Hollywood celebrities.
Within four years, over 1,500 homes had been sold and the population of Hesperia doubled. Hesperia officially incorporated as a city on July 1, 1988, with more than 82 percent of voters in favor of cityhood. Today, the city has a total population of over 99,000.
The information in this historical feature was originally part of a video series produced by the Assessor-Recorder-County Clerk’s office.
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