Lancaster

Lancaster is a city in the Antelope Valley of southern California, in the western Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles. In spring the hills west of the city turn orange with California poppies in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, where the flowers bloom from March to May.

The Southern Pacific Railroad founded Lancaster as a water stop in 1876 on its line between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley. Alfalfa farms and orchards grew on the valley floor with water from wells, and the town was a small farming center for much of the 20th century. In the 2010s the city required solar panels on new homes, one of the first such rules in the United States. From the 1940s new aircraft were tested at the desert airfields of the region, and the valley became a center of aerospace work. Lancaster was incorporated in 1977, and the Aerospace Walk of Honor on its main street honors test pilots of the valley.

BYD, the Chinese maker of electric vehicles, builds electric buses and trucks at its factory in Lancaster. Solar farms on the open desert around the city send power to the grid of southern California.

The Musical Road, a stretch of grooved pavement on Avenue G, plays the William Tell Overture when a car drives over it at the right speed. The Lancaster Museum of Art and History, on the main boulevard, shows art of the desert and the history of the valley. The Prime Desert Woodland Preserve keeps a stand of Joshua trees and junipers with trails inside the city.