The Mojave Road was built with congressional funding in 1857-60 as a transportation corridor linking California to the southwest and presently bisects what has since become the Mojave National Preserve. The passage through the desert that later became the Mojave Road served for centuries as a vital trail system for Native Americans tribes of the southwest. The first documented European exploration of the Mojave Indian Trails came from the Francisco Garcés expedition in 1776.

The trail system became significant in American history when trapper Jedediah Smith passed through the region in 1826, followed by Antonio Armijo in 1837 and John C. Fremont in 1844. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War in 1848, brought the region of the Mojave Indian Trail under control of the United States. In 1853 the U.S. Topographical Engineering party of Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple followed the Indian trail system through MOJA as part of their Transcontinental Railroad survey. Whipple’s influential and widely circulated survey report resulted in the construction of the Mojave wagon road by Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale between 1857-60.

After the Civil War the Mojave Road was the main mail link between Southern California and Arizona. Conflict between travelers and Native Americans resulted in an increased military presence and the construction of small forts and redoubts along the road. The U.S. military used the road extensively to move men and supplies from Los Angeles to and from Fort Mohave on the Colorado River. Use of the road by miners, homesteaders, and ranchers continued in the 1870s, though cessation of Native American hostilities meant the Army no longer had reason to occupy the forts. After the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1883 the road fell into disuse.

Portions of the road were used through the twentieth century by ranchers, farmers and the military but the majority of the historic road reverted to native vegetation. The complete road was rediscovered and carefully uncovered during the 1960s and 1970s. The road and its associated resources maintain a high degree of integrity clearly reflecting its important historical associations.