What's the Future of Quartzsite???

January 21, 2015

It was interesting to be back in Quartzsite and contrast this year's visit with last year's. Last year we came to experience our first RV rally. We don't consider ourselves “rally people”, so we have avoided them. RV rallies happen all over the country, all year. They are organized by national camping clubs; such as Good Sam's, Escapees, FMCA, and by owners of brands and types of RV's such as the View/Navion rally we attended. They are also organized by people with similar interests such as the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous of small van dwellers here at Quartzsite. Ours was organized by other owners, and the Quartzsite rally tends to be more informal than others. Everyone is boondocking, and it is a fun experience to swap stories, potluck, tour each others rigs and learn how to modify them to make them easier/more fun/safer/smarter. We had folks from both coasts, Alaska, Canada, and the Heartland, too, plus a few other friends with other types of rigs thrown in to the mix.

Camped with similar RVs to learn, share experiences, and make new friends.

Campfire circle for drinking wine and asking advice from the gurus.

The other reason we came to Quartzsite last year was for the “experience”. Anyone who spends time on the road or the internet comes across reports of Quartzsite in January. I read about Quartzsite before we left home while researching this lifestyle. We like having new experiences and seeing things for ourselves, so when we realized last year's rally would coincide with the event, we decided to try it. If the crowds got to be too much, we would just leave. We had already boondocked three times in the area, but not in January, so we had a rough idea where to go.

One of the Vendor/Flea-market areas

Shade, Beer, and Music - an unbeatable combination!

Apparently, there are customers for anything!

Carrying loot back to camp.

Without going into a long history of Quartzsite, this small town started attracting winter visitors with a gem and mineral show many years ago, and what has become an event with hundreds of tents and vendors now attracts hundreds of thousands of RV's and their occupants. No one knows how many RV's are here but it is a massive event. Sometime in the last couple decades the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) decided to begin to control the huge number of RV's wintering over on their land and established Long Term Visitor Areas (LTVA's). The damage had already been done to the desert, so why not provide some services for a small fee? $180 gets you seven months in the winter with access to a dump, well water, and garbage pick-up. For $40 you get 14 days, and you can renew that as long as you want. Or you can camp for free in other areas outside of town, but then you have to pay a vendor in town in order to dump and get water. The LTVA's are a better deal.

Campsites are primitive, whether crowded or alone

Seniors have been flocking in for years, and the vendors have been catering to them. I've jokingly called this the Burning Man/Woodstock for the senior set. The problem is that the senior set is getting too old and disabled to RV or is simply dying off, and business is dropping at Quartzsite. We've spoken to vendors last year and this that have noted that business is slowing down, and they are hopeful that as the baby boomers retire, they will start attending. This year fuel prices are lower and RV sales on the rise but, we noticed fewer campers in the LTVA and a lot of empty vendor spaces. Even the Big Tent, the prime space for vendors had a dozen or more empty spots. The vendors we talked to said that business was slower this year. We noticed more vendors renting out electric wheelchairs and specializing in other “senior products”. We are some of the youngest people attending!

Lonely Bull Ride - Are the customers afraid of  breaking a hip?

Soft-riding ATVs are very popular on the trail and on town streets.

 So what is the future for this iconic event? Will the retiring boomers start to fill in the empty spaces and spend their retirement dollars here? Or will the great Quartzsite event slowly die off as it's attendees die off or settle down to live out the rest of their days? I suspect the latter. We boomers are notorious for creating our own way, and rejecting our parents ways. I think even in retirement we will be inclined to do our own thing.

Quartzsite grew up in the era before the internet and social media, maybe even before cell phones. Newsletters, books, and word-of-mouth spread the news about places to gather. Social media has changed the way we relate to one another and created a way to spontaneously connect both in cyberspace and in person. The younger generation of RVer's is leading the way in creating spontaneous community that organically arises in a location that may not be a gathering place the next time. Chris and Cheri of Technomadia found themselves on the Gulf Coast of Florida last winter in what they called a Convergence, other RVers spontaneously gathered in the same campground and created a loose community that ended when each RVer decided it was time to move on. Anza-Borrego State Park in California became a gathering spot for the Christmas and New Year's holidays for younger fulltime RVers. I expect there are other connections being made by various sized groups that I haven't come across on the blogs I read.

The new social network site RVillage.com has as it's goal a way for RVers to connect with one another through the internet and facilitate meet-ups on the road. As more baby boomers take advantage of this resource, I expect that we will follow our younger cohort into spontaneous meet-ups and away from an established event like Quartzsite. I expect that a drive to a smaller experience and more intimacy will also be a factor.


Last year the quirkiness and novelty of the event were fun. This year we enjoyed the rally more than the event. Next year? Who knows? I think that we would enjoy reconnecting with the people we met this year, but, I don't think there is much appeal left in just attending the big event. Cheap camping? Good friends? That we could do!