A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered the closure of more than 2,000 miles of off-road vehicle routes across the Western Mojave Desert to protect the endangered Mojave tortoise, and the ruling may deliver a fatal blow to Randsburg, a tiny Wild West mining town that depends almost entirely on the off-roading community to survive.
Randsburg sits off Highway 395 in the mountains of Kern County, home to fewer than 100 residents. It looks like a set from an old Western, weathered storefronts, a single restaurant, a famous dive bar, and it has clung to life for decades after California's mining industry collapsed following World War II. Now its business owners say the court order has cut off the one economic lifeline they had left.
"Without off-roaders, this town is done," said Neil Shotwell, who owns the Joint, Randsburg's well-known dive bar, as reported by the Daily Mail.
The January ruling found that the Bureau of Land Management violated the Endangered Species Act when it adopted nearly 6,000 miles of dirt roads for off-road vehicle use under the West Mojave Route Network Project. The routes spanned public lands across four counties, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, and Inyo, connecting more than one million acres of conservation land.
The judge concluded that more than 2,000 of those miles posed a danger to the Mojave tortoise population and prohibited off-roaders from riding in critical habitat areas. The BLM is now required to close all off-highway vehicle routes within those zones.
Environmental groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, had sued the BLM, alleging the agency failed to protect the desert and its inhabitants from the damage caused by off-road vehicles. The judge agreed.
Defenders of Wildlife celebrated the decision. Jeff Aardahl, a representative of the group, said in a press release:
"With the BLM now required to close all off-highway vehicle routes in critical habitat areas, we can breathe a sigh of relief for these remarkable creatures. What's more, is that 270,000 acres of public land in the Western Mojave will continue to be available for unlimited off-highway vehicle recreation; this is a win for everyone."
A win for everyone, except, apparently, the people who actually live there.
Randsburg has been shrinking for the better part of a century. After the mining economy dried up, the town's population dwindled steadily. Its high school stopped operating in 1960. The place froze in time, surviving on grit and the occasional visitor drawn by its frontier character.
In recent years, off-roading culture gave Randsburg something it hadn't had in decades: a reason for outsiders to show up and spend money. Dirt bike riders and off-road enthusiasts became the town's primary customer base, filling the bar stools at the Joint and keeping the Vault, the town's only restaurant, in business.
The federal government's approach to managing wildlife and public lands has drawn increasing scrutiny, with the current administration recently rolling back hunting restrictions across dozens of national park sites in an effort to give states and local communities more say over land management.
Then came the September flood. It wiped out all but one road into Randsburg. Off-roaders, ironically, provided a lifeline during that crisis, they were among the few who could still reach the town and keep its businesses afloat. Now the court has effectively told those same riders to stay away from the surrounding desert.
Brad Myers owns the Vault, the only place in Randsburg where you can sit down for a meal. He is planning to close by mid-June.
"Without the dirt bike riders, I'll be closed by this time next month. There's just not enough people coming into town to sustain the businesses. I don't see, unless a miracle happens, how we are going to make it."
Myers is already selling off his remaining food shipment. When the Vault closes, Randsburg loses its sole restaurant.
Lorene and Travis Frankel, both architects, relocated to Randsburg during the pandemic. They bought a former automotive repair shop and gas station on Butte Avenue, planning to convert it into a photo shoot and event space. They also purchased the town's old high school, the one that shut down in 1960, with the same ambitions. The January ruling blindsided them.
Travis Frankel put it plainly:
"If we don't continue to get the off-roaders here, I'm not sure that our business plan even pencils out."
He added a note that went beyond dollars and cents: "It would be hard to replace that community and still have this place feel the way that it feels."
The pattern here is familiar across rural America. People invest in a community, build something, and then discover that a distant court or agency has rewritten the rules underneath them. The Frankels moved to Randsburg because they saw potential. A federal judge in San Francisco saw tortoises.
Defenders of Wildlife insists that 270,000 acres of public land in the Western Mojave remain open for "unlimited" off-highway vehicle recreation. That sounds generous on paper. But the question Randsburg's residents are asking is whether those remaining acres are anywhere near their town, and whether the riders who used to come through will bother rerouting.
The answer, based on what business owners are reporting, appears to be no. Off-roaders came to Randsburg because the surrounding desert routes brought them there. Remove the routes, and you remove the reason to visit. The 270,000 acres that remain open may serve riders elsewhere, but they do nothing for a town of fewer than 100 people clinging to one road in the mountains of Kern County.
Meanwhile, the natural world continues to pose challenges for communities across the American West, from dangerous organisms found in the waters of national parks to invasive species threatening ecosystems and infrastructure.
The BLM proposed the West Mojave Route Network Project to manage recreational access across more than a million acres of conservation land in four counties. Environmental groups challenged it. A federal judge sided with the groups. And now the agency is required to close the routes, with no publicly reported plan for how to mitigate the economic fallout on communities like Randsburg.
Several questions remain unanswered. Has the BLM begun implementing the closures, or is the order still pending? Has any party appealed? The ruling's full case caption, docket number, and even the judge's name have not been widely reported. What is clear is the effect: a town that was already hanging by a thread now faces extinction.
The Endangered Species Act is federal law, and courts are entitled to enforce it. But enforcement does not happen in a vacuum. When a ruling shuts down economic activity across four counties and more than a million acres, someone ought to ask who bears the cost, and whether the people making the decision will ever have to live with the consequences.
In this case, the environmental groups issued press releases from their offices. The judge ruled from San Francisco. And the people of Randsburg are left counting the days until the last restaurant closes. The concern over invasive species surging across the country is real, and wildlife management matters, but so do the livelihoods of Americans who built their lives on land the government now says they can't use.
Randsburg survived the end of the mining era, the loss of its school, a devastating flood, and decades of neglect. Whether it can survive a court order written 300 miles away, by people who will never set foot in its only bar, is another matter entirely.
Somewhere in the Western Mojave, a tortoise is safe. A town is not.
