Frank Critzer and the Room Under Giant Rock
Giant Rock stands by itself on the desert floor north of Landers. It's a granite boulder about seven stories tall. In the 1930s Frank Critzer, a prospector many took to be German-born, dug out a room underneath it and lived there. On the flat ground nearby he had a small landing strip, and he would come out to meet the occasional pilot.
July 1942 His supposed German roots and a radio antenna on the rock had already drawn suspicion, and in wartime it did not fade. In July 1942 sheriff's deputies came out to Giant Rock to question Critzer about thefts of dynamite and gasoline, and he barricaded himself inside his room. Deputies threw in tear gas, and an explosion killed Critzer and injured several of them. It has never been settled whether he set off dynamite on purpose or the gas ignited something he had stored inside.
After he died, George Van Tassel leased the site and opened a cafe and an airport there. He also built the Integratron a few miles away. Giant Rock split in 2000, and the break showed a fresh white face of granite. The rock is on Bureau of Land Management land, and getting there means rough dirt roads.
Desert Eccentric opens with Frank Critzer's story, in the chapter "Living Beneath a Rock."
Sources: Bureau of Land Management, California Desert District; contemporary coverage in the San Bernardino Sun, July 1942 (California Digital Newspaper Collection); Integratron history pages (integratron.com); The Mojave Project, "Giant Rock, Space People and the Integratron" (citing Critzer's 1928 Merchant Marine application).
Illustration: AI-generated, artistic interpretation.