Here in sunny California, deserts are to off-road vehicles what tracks are to racecars. And let’s face it – your from-scratch, fully-customized, painstakingly wrenched-together rig is only as fun as the trails you put it on.

Without deserts, though, where else are you supposed to take your beloved crawler or monstrous prerunner to enjoy it in its full glory?

Crawling is one of the many possibilities in the So-Cal OHV areas.

Well, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of beautiful, open terrain in California where off-roaders can gather and do as they please with their machines, but as time wears on, the amount of freedom we have to make use of the land around us is only becoming more limited. Between environmental laws, land development, expansion, and so on, the off-roading areas in California will only continue to shrink.

However, recent legislation has been introduced to help combat this. A new bill called the California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act (also known as HR 3668 or the CMORCA), was introduced on the first of this month by Congressman Paul Cook. Potentially, it will offer protection to some of the off-highway vehicle areas in Southern California.

Six of these areas in particular are covered under the bill: Johnson Valley, Spangler Hills, El Mirage, Rasor, Dumont Dunes, and Stoddard Valley. Each of these areas will be given national status, creating the first system of national off-highway vehicle areas in the country.

With the legislation in place, the federal government will be unable to either close or claim these areas. They will be preserved for recreation and off-roading, with no threat of being administratively closed or converted into monuments.

As if that wasn’t good enough, the act also goes even further to even expand OHV areas by over 60,000 acres. In total, it provides close to 300,000 acres of off-roading land protection.

These areas are not only get-away spots for weekend warriors, but are also home to many popular events such as the six SCTA land speed races a year held in El Mirage, the Halloween Weekend celebration in Dumont Dunes, and a number of competitive racing events in Stoddard Valley.

Deserts are a primary media for off-highway vehicles, and a large part of the off-roading community in general. Those here in California are no exception, so it goes without saying that this bill would be highly beneficial to the off-road community.