CULTURE & HISTORY

The City of Lancaster is surrounded by two major mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevada on the east and the San Gabriel range on the west. The first known inhabitants of the Antelope Valley were the Piute Indians, a branch of the Mojave tribe from which the Mojave Dessert takes its name. 

In the 1930s the airplane became an important part of the Antelope Valley's economy as the U.S. Army Air Corps began testing operations at Muroc Dry Lake which is now a part of the Edwards Air Force Base Flight Test Center. Edwards Air Force Base was selected as the landing site of the first manned space shuttle, the COLUMBIA.