Illegal pot invades California's deserts, bringing violence, fear and ecological destruction
Jaclyn Cosgrove and Louis Sahagún, Los Angeles Times
July 15, 2021
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Marijuana plants at Harboside Farms in Salinas, Calif., on Thursday, July 20, 2017.Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle
LOS ANGELES — Before his corpse was dumped in a shallow grave 50 miles north of Los Angeles, Mauricio Ismael Gonzalez-Ramirez was held prisoner at one of the hundreds of black-market pot farms that have exploded across California’s high desert in the last several years, authorities say.
He worked in what has become California’s newest illegal marijuana haven: the Mojave Desert. A world away from the lush forest groves of the “Emerald Triangle” of Northern California, this hot, dry, unforgiving climate has attracted more than a thousand marijuana plantations that fill the arid expanse between the Antelope Valley and the Colorado River.