Quartzsite as Community Without Ties

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Quartzsite is a place where people go to be alone together, not to form a community. Coming to Quartzsite is about being off-grid. Quartzsite goes beyond Jefferson to ally itself instead with Thoreau's vision of man within the environment, encountering its forces alone, and confronting God.

The snowbirds who come to Quartzsite are part of the same generation that undertook a mass exodus from the city to suburbia after World War II. This exodus was the product of a deliberate decision young people made to escape from their families and the demands of the public sphere.

In coming to Quartzsite, they recapture the anonymity of that era. With everyone in a camper, everyone is equal and their past is unimportant.

Quartzsite also allows individuals to recapture the close ties of the family. Even if few of the winter visitors comprise traditional nuclear families, generally RVs are occupied by more than one individual. The close proximity stimulates familial bonds.

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