WONDER VALLEY, Calif. — Helin Bereket spent hours driving her rental car down the dusty roads just east of Twentynine Palms earlier this year, photographing the abandoned homesteads that littered the desert landscape. The Berlin-based photographer had read online about the forgotten shacks filled with shriveled reminders that they were once homes decades ago.
Many of the homesteads were built in the 1950s as part of the Small Tracts Act, a popular federal program that awarded five-acre parcels to people who agreed to build homes on the property. Today, the abandoned shacks are as much a part of the desert as the creosote bushes that dot the land.
As her lens captured the dilapidated exteriors that the desert seemed intent on swallowing, Bereket said she was left with a nagging curiosity about who would relinquish these time capsules in the remote, unincorporated community of Wonder Valley.
