I came across this article detailing a squatters’ camp in the CA desert. While I’m sure its inhabits are mostly hippies and outcast the fact that they live there year round off the grid drew me to the story.
http://news.yahoo.com/slab-city-living-off-grid-californias-badlands-090000272.html
We’ve seen some of these places in our travels and they don’t look like fun places to live to us.
I heard an article on NPR (sadly, they’re the only good news that’s not on AM radio around here) about this place last week. Sounds like a bunch of hippies and down and out types as well as folks who choose to live on the edges of normal society.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145645412/down-and-out-escape-to-slab-in-california-desert
I first read about Slab City quite a few years ago in a magazine article. Here’s a 21 minute video made in SC and shows some of the characters who live there, actually pretty interesting. Everything from .Mil vets to tweakers and nutjobs. http://www.5min.com/Video/A-Day-in-Slab-City-517117154
Another interesting documentary that’s of a similar nature and available on Netflix is Off the grid: Life on the mesa. Here’s the description.
This engrossing documentary examines the unusual and often conflicted lifestyle led by a ragtag collection of teenage runaways, veterans, dreamers and political radicals as they scratch out an existence in the remote New Mexican desert. The residents may share a vision for a new way of life, but filmmakers Randy and Jeremy Stulbert don’t shy away from the collective’s underside, such as the steps taken to stop a series of robberies on the mesa.
Is the guy with the snakes the brother of Carl the greenskeeper (Bill Murray) from Caddyshack? :lol:
Interesting article pertaining to similar folk or extremists if you prefer the FBI’s definition. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/07/us-usa-fbi-extremists-idUSTRE81600V20120207
Researching and exploring FUDS is a hobby of mine, and it’s mostly sad to see what they become. Then you have places like slab city, which is positively begging to have the USMC retake Camp Dunlap and evict the squatters.
Nothing like a good work-up, prior to going on a WestPac. 
Different coast, but there is a documentary called “dark days” which follows a bunch of folks wh squat in the NYC subway system underground. Great film with a bitchin soundtrack.
They’re not hurtin’ anybody but themselves. Live and let live. 
I’ve been there, most of the residents are elderly retired people who leave in the summer. Some of the permanent residents are definitely NOT people you want to meet on a dark night in the desert.
Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea is a documentary about the general area, with some attention paid to the Calipatria and Niland areas. The Imperial Valley in general is an unbelievable place, but definitely not a place you want to live in the summer.
Why? It’s not federal property anymore and those people aren’t hurting anyone.
Thanks everyone for the additional stories and or vids! It is educational to see how the other half live sometimes.
LOL, I coudn’t help but think the same damn thing!
I trained in yuma arizona where there was also another slab city.