Driving on Interstate 8 east of San Diego and down in the desert I’ve passed the Desert View Tower a plethora of times but I’ve never taken the time to exit the freeway and check it out. On a trip to Phoenix last week I decided it was time to see what it was all about. The tower was built in the early 1920’s to commemorate the building of the road and railroad through the area. The light-house like tower at the western edge of Imperial County stands 3,000 feet above the Imperial Valley. The 70-foot tower was built by Bert Vaughn, the owner of the town of Jacumba, as a tribute to the days when it took a month to travel from San Diego to Yuma, AZ.
