Victorville, California, 2009
ink and pencil on paper, 45 x 192 in
Late one night in the summer of 2005, while driving south on U.S. route 395 towards Los Angeles, I passed through the town of Victorville, California. At the time I was unaware of the new Federal Prison there, but approaching the town from the desert its presence was made clear by the distinctive illumination of prison lights visible on the edge of town.
In March 2009 I returned to Victorville for two days, with the intent of making drawings based on the prison and surrounding landscape. The drawing Victorville, California, 2009, is the result of that visit.
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Victorville, California is a desert community on the southern edge of the Mohave Desert, and the location of Victorville Federal Prison, a high security penitentiary, which opened in October 2004. The prison was designed to house 960 people, and currently houses about 1500*. It was constructed on the site of a former military airbase, which was decommissioned in 1992.
Across the street from the prison, the former base housing is now vacant, forming a ghost town that is used for urban warfare training by troops from Fort Irwin Military Reservation. Since closing, the airport has been designated a foreign trade zone, and redesigned to accommodate large international carriers as a base for importing products to the western United States.
It is estimated that fully 60% of all goods moving into and out of Southern California travel through Victorville*. Considered a public airport, 70,000 troops a year still use the airport as the main transport hub to and from the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin in the Mohave Desert.*
*Sources: City of Victorville official website, Federal Bureau of Prisons official website, and Wikipedia website
