Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Mojave, CA

Mojave is an unincorporated desert community in eastern Kern County, about 50 miles southeast of Bakersfield at an elevation of 2,762 feet, on the western edge of the Mojave Desert below the Tehachapi Mountains.

The town began in 1876 as a dusty construction camp for the Southern Pacific Railroad as the line pushed through the desert.

From 1884 to 1889, Mojave was the western terminus of the famous 166-mile twenty-mule-team borax wagon route hauling borax out of Death Valley's Harmony Borax Works.

Mojave later served as the headquarters for construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the giant water project that transformed Los Angeles.

Mojave is home to the Mojave Air and Space Port, the first inland spaceport in the United States, where SpaceShipOne made history on June 21, 2004 with the first privately developed human spaceflight.

The airport began in 1935 as a Kern County airstrip serving local gold and silver mines, then became Marine Corps Auxiliary Air Station Mojave during World War II, training many of the Corps' fighter aces.

Today the spaceport hosts aerospace firms such as Scaled Composites and the civilian National Test Pilot School, and it was the home base of the Rutan Voyager, the first aircraft to fly around the world nonstop without refueling.

The 2020 census counted 4,699 people in Mojave, living in 1,677 households spread across a vast 58.5-square-mile census area — only about 81 people per square mile.

Mojave is a majority-renter town: about 61% of its occupied homes were renter-occupied at the 2020 census, and its median household income was $50,800 in 2023.

Mojave has a true desert climate, averaging only about 6 inches of rain a year, with a record high of 118°F set in August 1914 and occasional winter snow.