El Mirage OHV Area — A Living Piece of the Mojave for Off-Highway Drivers

Out past Adelanto, tucked between U.S. Highway 395 and the Los Angeles County line, sits a stretch of Mojave Desert that's been set aside specifically for motorized recreation: the El Mirage Off-Highway Vehicle Area.

Managed by the Bureau of Land Management's Barstow Field Office, El Mirage covers 27,275 acres — enough open desert to accommodate a wide range of uses. According to the BLM, the area is open to motorcycles, ATVs, trucks, cars, buggies, and other motorized vehicles, alongside non-motorized recreation as well. It's the kind of place where the desert itself is the draw — wide open terrain rather than a built attraction.

This piece is intentionally limited to what the BLM source verifies: location, size, managing agency, and current permitted uses. El Mirage may carry additional significance to Southern California automotive history — but that's not something this article claims, because it isn't something this particular source confirms. Any deeper automotive or racing history connected to this place will need its own separately sourced and verified piece before it's published here.

For now, what we can say plainly: El Mirage is a real, currently managed public recreation area in the Mojave Desert, open to a wide range of motorized vehicles and activities.

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