The Mojave Desert Archives preserves the history of transcontinental travel to the Los Angeles region through the Mojave Desert of eastern California. Route 66, National Old Trails Road, the Mojave Wagon Road, the Santa Fe Railway (now BNSF), Union Pacific Railroad, and Interstate highways were and are major transit routes through the desert terminating in the Los Angeles basin.

UCSB professor David Gebhard (1927-1996) founded the Architecture and Design Collection in 1963. Today it is one of the largest architectural archives in North America with more than 1,000,000 drawings, as well as papers, photographs, scrapbooks, models, decorative objects, and furniture. The focus of the collection is the design and architecture of southern California from the late 19th through…