About Needles

Needles is a city located in the Mojave Desert on the western banks of the Colorado River in San Bernardino County, California. It is located in the Mohave Valley, which straddles the California–Arizona border. The city is accessible via Interstate 40 and U.S. Route 95. The population was 4,844 at the 2010 census, up from 4,830 at the 2000 census.

Needles was named after "The Needles", a group of pointed rocks on the Arizona side of the river. The large Mohave Native American community, shares the nearby Fort Mojave Indian Reservation and the town. Needles is a gateway to the Mojave National Preserve.

"Ancient petroglyphs, pictographs, intaglios art, and old trails and stonework sites, bear witness to those who came from an earlier time." (Needles Chamber of Commerce)

The Mohave, one of the traditional Native American Colorado River Indian Tribes, are people that have been living in the Mojave Valley area for thousands of years prior to the European exploration of the area. In the Mohave language, they call themselves the 'Aha Makhav. Their name comes from two words: aha, meaning 'river', and makhav, meaning 'along or beside', and to them it means 'people who live along the river'.

The historic Mojave Road now goes through the Mojave National Preserve. Along it, in 1859, Fort Mojave was built to protect new pioneer immigrants to California and other travelers from the Mohave. The city was founded in 1883 as a result of the construction of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which crosses the Colorado River at this point. The name is derived from pointed mountain peaks and the wind-blown holes in them (which can only be seen by boat from the Colorado River), the Needles, at the south end of the valley. The Railway and the Fred Harvey Company built the elegant Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts style El Garces Hotel and Santa Fe Station in 1908, was considered the "Crown Jewel" of the entire Fred Harvey chain. The landmark building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is being restored.

Needles was a major stop on the historic U.S. Route 66 highway from the 1920s through 1960s. For immigrants from the mid-west Dust Bowl in the 1930s it was the first town, marking arrival in California. The city is lined with motels and other shops from that era. The "Carty's Camp" which appears briefly in The Grapes of Wrath (film) as the Joad family enters California from Arizona is now a ghost tourist court, its remains located behind the 1946-era 66 Motel.