Mojave National Preserve

High noon and the desert is hot as a wok, yet Tim Duncan is wearing body armor under his uniform. A handgun and a Taser hang from his belt. Next to him in the truck are a shotgun and an M-16 assault rifle with extra magazines. "Out here, you have to be prepared," he said.

To some, the large white cross in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve stands as a memorial to World War I veterans and a symbol of their faith. But others, now represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, see it as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution. On Thursday, the latter group filed a lawsuit in federal court charging that the National Park Service illegally refused to remove the cross from government land.

When Las Vegas built McCarran Airport 50 years ago, it was on the outskirts of the city, a healthy cab ride to downtown casinos. Today, with McCarran ranking ninth in the nation in passenger traffic and hemmed in by, among other things, a pyramid, a castle and the New York skyline, officials want to build a secondary airport to accommodate the boom--and once again are looking to the boondocks. Boondocks, indeed.

The Mojave Desert groundwater thatCadiz Inc.wants to sell to Southland suburbs contains hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen, in amounts that are hundreds of times greater than the state's public health goal for drinking water. The presence of the toxic heavy metal, which occurs naturally in the aquifer Cadiz proposes to tap, could force the company to undertake expensive treatment, driving up the cost of the project and ultimately the price of its water. The chromium contamination is one of several concerns raised by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which owns and operates the 242-mile-long Colorado River Aqueduct that Cadiz would use to transport its supplies to customers.

"Boom, boom!" shouts Sophia, my 3-year-old daughter, as she slides down the steep southeast face of the Kelso Dunes. "I have never seen more sand in the whole world!" As we near the top of the dunes, our footsteps cause mini-avalanches and the dunes sha-boom sha-boom for us. Geologists speculate that the extreme dryness of the East Mojave Desert, combined with the wind-polished, well-rounded grains of sand, has something to do with their musical ability.

To many, this is a place to hurry through. The austere expanse of scrubby desert and jagged mountains in the care of the National Park Service is more popular as a shortcut between Los Angeles and Las Vegas than it is as a destination. A recent Park Service survey found that the majority of the 650,000 annual visitors here spend less than three hours before moving on. The survey reflects a hard truth: The 1.6-million-acre preserve is an acquired taste.

The largest private landowner in the new Mojave National Preserve has threatened to begin extensive mineral exploration and mapping of subdivisions after the collapse of a land swap that ran into conflict with the Clinton administration's deal to save the Headwaters Forest. Since passage of the controversial 1994 Desert Protection Act, the Department of the Interior has been attempting to acquire numerous private holdings within the newly created Mojave preserve and surrounding wilderness areas.

A long-running dispute over a cross in the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California may give the Supreme Court a chance to shift the law on church-state separation. Bush administration lawyers urged the justices last week to take up the case and to reverse a series of rulings that would "require the government to tear down a cross that has stood without incident for 70 years as a memorial to fallen service members." The appeal may be well timed.

A quarrel over waterholes in the Mojave is pitting hunters against naturalists, the needs of game animals against those of federally protected wildlife, and is resurrecting decade-old differences over the purpose of a national preserve. Until recently, the dispute has been limited to mule deer and bighorn sheep hunters who favor the creation of more desert water sources and conservationists who argue that man-made waterholes draw predators that prey on the threatened California desert tortoise.

More than 200,000 acres of the Mojave Desert have been turned over to the federal government in a deal that is part of an ongoing effort to preserve a sprawling checkerboard of empty former railroad land from Barstow to the Colorado River. Described as one of the largest transactions of its kind in state history, the recent $25-million sale of Catellus Development Corp.