What would you look for when buying land in the desert?

New here, hi! Due to unforseen circumstances outside my control that I won't be getting into here, I won't be able to start my homestead in the swamps of Florida. One of the (possibly) viable options I have laid out is about the opposite in terms of water availability, and the other side of the country: the southern California/Nevada desert. I'm obviously not accustomed to this climate, growing up and living all along the east coast. And I'm not particularly able to visit multiple times to look at land, as the budget is tight. So, the question for those more knowledgeable than me, and perhaps for those who find themselves in a similar situation: What would you be looking for, either as a positive indicator, or a negative one? Is that huge stretch of nothing but flat sand and a couple bushes so cheap because conventional folks don't want it, or is it actually useless for a homestead site as well?

My current list of what I'm keeping my eyes open for are:

Vegetation already growing in photos

Houses or farms nearby with trees, yards, or other growing things, though this could be well or transported water

Speculated flood zone through map data, to be verified with state/county records, as potential well sites. Here on the east coast that means the ground water is higher, so a well would be more likely. But it may also be due to runoff/snowmelt, which would still give ample opportunity for rainwater capture.

Evidence of water movement from higher ground on satellite maps. I gather these are called washes out there? This could definitely be useful for water diversion and capture, though it seems it may not be indicative of being able to drill a well to make any dwellings a legal residence

I'm not particularly picky and I'm not afraid of some good old time and sweat equity. I mainly just need it to be able to be a legal residence according to local building codes, which usually require water, electricity, and approved waste management. And, obviously, be able to grow some things. I'd be glad to get some wisdom there. Is there anything I'm missing? How would you prioritize those indicators? Or would you absolutely not buy a lot without being able to see it? I hope even if I settle on one of the other options, perhaps this discussion will be useful, what with the prices of desert land being more accessible.

Sounds like you’re looking for the right indicators as far as water that might be available for you and your plants/animals. Definitely make sure that you are not near/on a toxic site, lots of mining and testing of the nuclear variety out here. Also mining can pollute a water supply decades after it has been abandoned, and we don’t tend to hold those that contaminated the land and water accountable in this country or even check on these things when they have used up a site. So read back issues of local papers, high country news, see if there’s a public lands office around and find out what they know. I’m sure others will have great suggestions.

Research in detail for water right laws where you plan to buy.

I think you need to also think about "Will my homesteading here help or hurt the land? Will I deplete or recharge the water table?"

Brad Lancaster, Bill Zeedyck, Art Ludwig are good names to research to explore that aspect.

Land prices in the desert highly correlate with water availability. Less water = Lower prices.

A once in 5 year flash flood doesn't do much for a homestead.

+1 for the Brad Lancaster books, Vol2 is the most useful.

I live in central AZ, and water is very scarce. We have done berms+swales, lots of mulch, and I am working on improving catchment and greywater. If you have to live in a desert, try to use every drop twice (a slogan that condemns me, but I still hold to it).

Vegetation is key. Most people around me blade their land when they build, and then "clean it" by dragging it with a chain or other implement, further drying and dusting. Too bad. Try not to do that, and maybe stay away from properties where people do. We kept as much vegetation as we could when putting our house in, and are about 50ft away and 10ft up from a medium sized wash. That provides the treeline to give us privacy from our southern neighbors, and also is a sheltered edge against which we have started a number of trees. Work outwards from existing vegetation where possible, it will help you. Wind is harsh where we are, and we are trying to build up vegetative windbreaks on the east edge of our property to slow the prevailing E-W wind. Washes are feast/famine affairs, and messing with them often goes badly if you haven't studied and planned carefully (Lancaster's book is good here). However, native vegetation follows washes and is well adapted to gathering and storing water from the intermittent rains, thus, much can be learned from where and how it grows. Avoid predominantly-creosote areas if you can, and former rangeland is usually shot for a decade or so without intervention, and will be a project if you buy it (not saying don't, just know that you're starting from damaged goods).

In your shoes, I would look at all nearby weather data for wind speeds/directions, get rainfall info as locally as you can, and even use the USDA soil survey map (here: https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/) to get a feel for what it might be like. You could check out what local 4H clubs do to get a feel for what "normal" ag is practiced in the area, and you can often find well registries online to see who is pumping what and how deep. (For Nevada, see: http://water.nv.gov/welllogquery.aspx where you can query by county or township etc., and find out static water level of performing wells - look at the dates of drilling, too, and see what's recent.) If you're going off-grid, always check out NREL's PVWatts (here: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/) for a solar system performance estimate in your area - which will also tell you roughly how hot & sunny it's going to be...

One major plus of the desert southwest, if you are far enough from cities: the night sky. There's not much like a clear desert sky, especially if you are into telescope astronomy.

Best of luck in your search!
Mark

I suppose long distance sensing might be the start of the possibility of a beginning.

I'm not sure what the second stages of the plan are, but personally, I would never ever buy a property without walking it, seeing what grows, and smelling the soil.

I would also seek out advice from the neighbours and maybe the local cop shop, to better understand what I'm walking into. Easier said than done, but better than a thousand expensive regrets. My 2c.

Mark Miner wrote: get rainfall info as locally as you can
Mark

Good point -- CoCoRaHS.com is a great resource for hyper-local rain data! Then when you move to the desert, become a CoCoRaHS volunteer and report your daily precipitation. It's a great service and will also give you great info about your land.

I would strongly advise against purchasing desert land. This is not a place where you can build self sustainability unless you have a lot of time/money. Of course there are exceptions, but they are just exceptions. If it was easy to turn the desert into a lush paradise a lot of humans would do it, because some populations/nations have no other choice of land - just desert that surrounds them, but it's not the case. Half an acre of Wisconsin will do more than 10 of a desert.
Besides water shortage there are other factors not discussed here: massive diurnal temperature swings - usually not liked by the plants that we like, poor soil, late and early frost dates, and all animals that desperately need water and will take whatever contains any moisture.

Challenging for sure.

Dr Allan Savory and Geoff Lawton comes into my mind who did successfully claiming deserts back and making fertile land of it.

Check this out:
https://www.green.earth/blog/preventing-desertification-top-5-success-stories

Hi,
I'd check whether there are wells, and how much you can irrigate with that.

Maybe you'll find interesting this guide I put myself some time ago.
https://permies.com/t/221615/permie-guide-Drylands

We have a small land holding (.43 acre) in a desert area (9" of precipitation annually). Fortunately, a long established irrigation company supplies our area with water through a pipe and ditch system. Technically our 1/2 share of water provides us with 1/2 acre foot of water or 163,000 gallons per growing season. The water isn't actually metered, we open a gate from the ditch and gravity flow irrigate when we need it.
We along with two downstream neighbors maintain a couple of short upstream ditch and pipe sections where the water flows through properties with no water shares, the property owners derive no benefit from the irrigation system and refuse to maintain their pipe/ditch sections.
If I were looking for land in a desert area my first requirement would be a reliable water source.  

I think most people saying "don't go to the desert!" don't live in a desert and they have very generalized ideas. I live in a desert community with perennial streams, feet of snow every year, and lots of ground water. But because the precipitation is in the winter and snow, it doesn't count as rain precipitation (cause, fair enough, it's not rain).

I don't have to worry about mosquitoes or ticks and rust is pretty rare. Things dry out quickly and not much rots. It works well for me. High altitude as well so even hot days get cool at night and since the air is so thin moisture can't stay in the air and only moist air holds heat very well.

Fair comment. It sounds like you have a great situation!

I think people are suggesting it's critical to sweat the details on an unknown property, on the ground, to know if a homestead might be viable. If uncontaminated water is not available, in sufficient volumes through the seasons, it just will not work. My 2c.

Of course not all deserts are equal, but I doubt you can get cheap desert land with irrigation canals gushing with water through the property or with a high yield well that has not contaminated, potable water.
Desert climate - especially high desert is pleasant to live for humans, but not for most edible plants. Mine is more more wet, continentalized Mediterranean with high desert features and I love it, but growing plants is very difficult. At least I can produce a lot of sheep - on a dessert they would not have enough vegetation. Even here, most of the native plants are not palatable to them.

Cristobal, the answer to unpalatable weeds are goats. That's why goats are so popular in North Africa.

Also, I think it is worth to specify what we do understand by desert.
First, there's the amount of rain per year. Most fruit trees need an average minimum of 500 mm for an orchard. This is semi-arid. With less than 400 mm per year, no fruit tree is able to produce. That'd be arid. However, by increasing the catchment area (a zone without vegetation that just captures water for plants below), even in an arid climate we can grow thirsty plants.
Then, there's the desert raining pattern. In deserts, we don't have soft rains, but a cycle of flood and draught. Growing anything in a desert climate requires capturing the flooding rains into the soil, which usually involves some kind of earthworks.

Brief. If the climate is more arid, it requires more space. If it is more desertic, it requires more energy. If temperatures are extreme, it requires plants adapted to that.

I would suggest checking into local sources available.

We are very happy with our property.  We have been here since 2013.  

The two things that we forgot to check before buying our property were available services and flooding.

By available services, I am referring to backhoe operators, carpenters, lumber suppliers, etc.  Having lived in a big city, to me driving 30 miles to earn money was nothing.  Here, they will not give estimates if they have to drive 30 miles.  The backhoe operator would not come out unless he had another job here on the same day.

Some advice about flooding and wet weather creeks.  We found out the hard way when we could not get to the property and had to find somewhere to spend the night.

Edit to say: We bought on top of a mountain at 3,000 ft, who would have thought about flooding?

Look at the work done by Seff Holzer, Mark Sheppherd, Geoff Lawton, and Bill Mollison because all of these folks used some sort of Dryland Farming techniques.

There are techniques and ways to get water to your plants and "greening the desert".

Here are some threads you or others might find helpful:

https://permies.com/t/138768/Water-Plants-Trees-Drought-Conditions

https://permies.com/t/58559/Big-Fat-Thread-Dryland-Farmin

Best wishes for your future purchase.

Cristobal Cristo wrote:Of course not all deserts are equal, but I doubt you can get cheap desert land with irrigation canals gushing with water through the property or with a high yield well that has not contaminated, potable water.
Desert climate - especially high desert is pleasant to live for humans, but not for most edible plants. Mine is more more wet, continentalized Mediterranean with high desert features and I love it, but growing plants is very difficult. At least I can produce a lot of sheep - on a dessert they would not have enough vegetation. Even here, most of the native plants are not palatable to them.

That's fair, but where sheep won't due goats can do fine. Grapes do amazing as well as do apples. One of our creeks we don't have water rights too, but that doesn't stop a prolific amount of foliage from growing. Our state (Nevada) is also open range so unless someone fences their property it is legal and ethical to treat it as graze / browse land.

I think what I've noticed is that folks in, say Missouri, will look at my place and see all the things they can't do that they currently do. And I look at them with the same eyes. I see humidity, ticks, wood rot, termites, apple blight, black widows, etc. Problems I just don't have to deal with. But then they look at me and see no way to pasture sheep effectively, grow water and humidity loving plants, or have ponds.

We looked long and hard before we found our land, and as you said you really need to dot your i's and cross your t's when it comes to property selection. Our well is artesian, about 3/4 a mile away a guy had to go down 1,000' feet!

I live in Utah, which is part of the same desert as Nevada.  We get the vast majority of our precipitation as snow in the winter.

I've decided I want to grow my garden using only water from my ecosystem, never using the hose.  I started this year, and so far it's working.  It just takes a lot of care.  Here are the basics:

1) Capture all greywater that you can.  If you don't have a greywater system in your house (I don't; way too expensive to install one), you can ad hoc something by putting a big bowl in your sink under the tap, so that any rinse water goes into that bowl, and can be taken out to the garden.  I don't do this with soapy water (not great for plants), so I don't do this with the bathtub.  However, I use bathwater after a bath to hand-wash dirty clothing.

2) Capture all rainwater that you can.  I don't have gutters on the back of my house, though it would be nice if I did.  So instead, I have a row of 5-gallon buckets all along the back edge, and four rain tanks (250-gallon IBC totes) that I manually carry those buckets to and empty the water into.  This takes a lot of time, and is inconvenient.  If you can build gutters onto your house that will automatically direct all rain or snowmelt into rain tanks, awesome.

3) Drip irrigation is very efficient.  It can also be very expensive.  If you plan to use any sort of hoses (such as those used for drip irrigation) to pull from rain barrels or rain tanks, they need to be high above the ground, so that gravity can give you water pressure.  Otherwise, you can turn the faucet on your rain tank to pour the captured water into a bucket and haul it over to your garden and dump it out around your plants.  That will take a lot of time, but it will be very cheap.  Either way, don't use sprinklers.  More than half of the water will be lost to evaporation, and it will be WAY MORE than half if you use any kind of mulch.

4) Mulch.  Lots of mulch.  Except, beware of lots of mulch in the spring, if your winters are wet, because the mulch will be full of roly polies that will eat every seed you plant.  (Ask me how I know.)  Very light mulch or no mulch at all in the winter or spring is best; tons and tons of mulch in the summer, so you can irrigate only once a week and get away with it.

5) Earthworks.  Berms and swales are your friends.

6) Remember to save your own seeds, and get seeds from your neighbors who do.  If it survives and makes food in your desert climate, you want those genetics next year.  Look for varieties that are bred for the desert, or at least say they are drought tolerant.  They will be able to do more with less water.  That helps a ton.

7) Lots and lots and lots and lots of organic material needs to go in your soil, in order to hold any water you get.  This goes double if your soil is pure sand (mine is).  Don't stick your food scraps in a compost pile; bury them directly in the soil, so you've got them absorbing and holding in moisture ASAP.  Hugelkultur can help, too.  (Also, if you want to add nitrogen to the soil, remember human urine is pathogen-free, full of nitrogen, and sustainable because it's always available from yourself.  Pouring a bunch of urine in with dead branches, and then covering it all with soil, can be a good way to prevent the issue of rotting wood tying up a little too much nitrogen in the soil the first year.)

8) Look around for edible weeds.  Taste them.  Check the nutrition.  They may be desirable crops, and if so, you'll have crops that don't need irrigation.  This year, I decided to upgrade purslane from "weed" to "crop" and sow seeds of it into all my garden beds on purpose.  Why, you may ask?  Because it's a tasty, nutritious, productive plant that can handle my climate without help.  I'm always happy to eat it.  And it's basically a ground cover.  Why not let it grow as a highly desirable groundcover layer underneath things like tomatoes and beans?

9) Observe the wild plants in your area.  Here, we get almost all our precipitation in winter, and our winters are fairly mild (zone 7b), so we have lush green grass everywhere all winter and dead grass all summer.  Take the hint from what nature does in your climate.  Clearly this is an ideal place to grow winter annual grasses, such as wheat!  (I've seen barley growing feral by the freeway, in fact.)  It is also a great place to grow brassicas, fava beans, and peas through the winter.  Grow as many crops as you can during the season that gives you the most water, even if that season is winter.

Bonus idea: Is it a high elevation desert with lots of direct sunlight that gets really hot in summer?  Plants that need "full sun" will probably actually need partial shade.  Plant lots and lots of fruit trees to provide partial shade to them.  Lots of people use shade cloth.  I say this is silly.  "Too much sun" is an invitation to plant more trees!

I'll add a #10 to your list: wind. Between the winter winds in the mountains here and the dry summer winds they can just be really damaging. We've used a combination of gabion walls and native vegetation to blunt the impact. On the latter, we went to our state nursery (https://forestry.nv.gov/washoe-state-tree-nursery) and got some plants like coyote willow which are just bushy ball-shaped plants that grow quick and make a good ~4 foot tall wind break.

Good on you for being willing to do permaculture in the desert. In a drying and heating world, I can't think of anything more important to do than set up these systems to feed the future. I am in Southern Colorado in high desert.

So the things I would look for.

1. Elevation. Higher the better. Gives you cooler temps, slightly higher humidity, wind, and orographic effect on rainfall.
2. A continuous slope so all your swales can feed into eachother in a zig zag patten.
3. Indicator plants that indicate that the land is ready to move to the next level. Those would be rabbit brush, juniper, salt bush and sage brush. These can be nurse plants for trees.
4. Try to find a bowel at the foot of hills or mountains. Try to find an area that receives a 100 acres or more of uphill run off. If you can find that, then your swale system will really sing. This area will also be more likely to have ground water.
5. An area with a mixture of loose soil and rocks. You will need the rocks for check dams.
6. North facing or east facing slope.
7. A property bordered by many dirt roads. Use these to install roll off berms to redirect the road runoff to your property.
8. Make a test hole and make sure you can actually dig down three feet. Many of these desert areas have impenetrable caliche or bedrock that precludes tree growth.
9. Try to avoid areas with high calcium carbonate. Dig up a few rocks on the property. If the bottom of the rock looks like someone painted it with plaster then there's too much calcium carbonate. Those this is not a deal killer however.

I live in the high desert of the Permian Basin, west Texas at about 3500ft. I have been here 10 years. I grew up in north Florida and lived on the eastern coast and midwest and yes, it was a big adjustment for me. We have been on 2 acres for about 8 years. It houses a small RV park, another dwelling and an area for mechanic work so I have about 1/2 acre to homestead. Temps go abover 110F in the summer on quite a few days. It can also snow a couple time and often freezes in the winter. It is a flat mesa and there is a lot of wind. Wind, so much wind. My soil is nearly pure clay and there are layers of caliche from 1 ft to 3 ft down.

Our water well has good water but runs about 2 gallons a minute. We have 2 - 300 gallon holding tanks. With an RV park and homestead and all, I spend a lot of life minutes searching out the leak if the water pressure drops or someone hears the air rumbling in the PVC pipes. Water management is a big deal. We have managed to avoid having water delivered like some do in this area. In a 10 mile square, some areas have more water than others so I would be wary of generalized water claims. I think my desert is different from the desert you are looking at so I am just telling you everything I can think of.

Unlike some desert areas, when it is hot, it stays hot through the night. The coolest part of the day is dawn. We have tried a number of things to grow plants. We successfully grew several willow trees with micro-irrigation. Ditto for fruit trees and roses. My success with a garden has been spotty. I'm not a great gardener anyway. Like someone else said, even tomatoes need shade here at times but it is very tricky. If I were doing it over, I would become conscious from the getgo about where the sun travels across the sky and closely observe native vegetation. There is a wild amaranth that can be encouraged that many of my animals can eat. The willows have been forage for my rabbits but into s second year of drought (in the growing season), I could not harvest much this year. The mulberries did better and they also provide forage.

So think multipurpose and with an eye to what you want to do and yes, plant trees. Anything you can get to grow helps the microenvironment.

Our family is in the SE USA. We hope to move back to south GA next year (2024). I would network as much as I could to find folks in the area willing to help. You could seek out breeders of an animal you plan to raise. You might even be able to get someone to talk to you at a feed store in the area. Anyway you can think of to talk to people there, try it.

I like that my towels don't mold. I love the big sky. But honestly, I cannot wait to have pasture again.

As someone who has grown up in more humid climates, when I go to the desert, my discomfort at dry eyes, bleeding nose, cracking and itching skin is so immense, I wonder if that would be doable for me.

I assume a person would adapt, but it's worth thinking about.  Because those everyday niggling things can drive a person crazy!

Kai Terveer wrote:What would you look for when buying land in the desert?

Water. Weeds. Women. If it is missing any of those you know you're going to run into problems eventually.

The desert I live in was greened years ago, it's got all 3.

T Simpson wrote:

Kai Terveer wrote:What would you look for when buying land in the desert?

Water. Weeds. Women. If it is missing any of those you know you're going to run into problems eventually.

"Women"...the Chinese forgot about this part.  Seems they are noticing the "unanticipated consequences" of this at the moment!

(Check out the Loess Plateau video by John Liu if anyone wants to see a large-scale Chinese restoration project.)

I think if you have never lived in the area nor traveled around it extensively, and you aren't familiar with both the lifestyle and unique laws and conventions of BOTH California and Nevada, then you'd be much better off if you Woofed or hired on as farm help with someone else in the area before making a decision to purchase land there.

What you are suggesting is extreme mode. I firmly believe that as far as the USA goes the great inland sea is the most difficult to homestead, and the degraded lands sold cheaply are often the most difficult of the most difficult.

Is there cheap land there? Yes. Is there a reason it is cheap? Also yes. On that note, while the land is cheap, my well will cost me approximately 20k. And at any point in the future if water is run to my area, I will be forced to connect to it. There are some very different laws in both California and Nevada than anywhere in the country, and you should be familiar with them before you even consider it.

What the West offers is the kind of isolation people from the Eastern seaboard can only imagine. There is a reason that the deserts in that area are used as a setting for both "the moon" and "mars" by Hollywood. What's the furthest you've ever driven to a grocery store? Have you ever been so remote that EMS regularly called a helicopter for emergency transport? (and understand how this impacts cost of care and insurance?) How is your first aid knowledge? Have you ever lived without utilities or cell service more than a mile from the closest neighbor? How comfortable are you driving on dirt roads? Are you comfortable enough defending your own family and livestock when police have a response time greater than an hour?  Do you understand fire insurance and rating- it is thousands of dollars a month for fire insurance on your home when you go to a 9 iso rating..i.e. not within 1000 feet of a hydrant- most homesteads.  What do you know about open range laws? Venomous Snakes? ETC.

Happy to connect if you want to pick my brain, I lived rurally in Colorado's Eastern Plains for more than 10 years, Lived in El Paso for a year, and road-tripped extensively through the Southwest before ever making my decision to buy in Northern Nevada. But I think your best course of action would be to find something in that climate that is low risk- a rental in a small town with a normal job, a position as farm help, etc. and get to know the area, the climate, and the people in a low-risk way  before making your decision.

Anne Miller wrote:I would suggest checking into local sources available.

Edit to say: We bought on top of a mountain at 3,000 ft, who would have thought about flooding?

Look at the work done by Seff Holzer, Mark Sheppherd, Geoff Lawton, and Bill Mollison because all of these folks used some sort of Dryland Farming techniques.

Thanks, Anne that's the one I forgot!

Deserts are floods waiting to happen. Also. people are so so right about the wind. We called our Colorado house the tumbleweed nexus because it was not uncommon to wake up in the morning and have a mountain of tumbleweeds blocking the front door, so he'd leave for work out of the back yard. Then after a few hours I'd let the dogs out, but have to leash walk them out the front and around to the yard, because the tumbleweeds would be up to the eaves in the back, but none in front.  then by the time he's come home again, they would all be gone. Our winds were regularly 70+ MPH. We took the cylinders off both screen doors after we went through about 4 of them. Most of the neighbors took the screen door off altogether. Every neighbor wrote their whole address on their 55 gallon trash CAN (and the lid) so that when a can blew into your yard you could return it to the house three blocks over that it came from. Once I found my neighbor's Metal gazebo upside down in my back yard, I had been bolted to concrete and I had an undamaged 8 foot wooden fence. I can't even begin to describe how many times we re-roofed from wind damage.

Alina Green wrote:As someone who has grown up in more humid climates, when I go to the desert, my discomfort at dry eyes, bleeding nose, cracking and itching skin is so immense, I wonder if that would be doable for me.

I assume a person would adapt, but it's worth thinking about.  Because those everyday niggling things can drive a person crazy!

Definitely a big deal especially for women.

I now only wash my hair once a week. I have multiple oils that I use and buy in bulk from Bulk Apothecary.

I don't even shower or bathe everyday like when I am in a humid clime. What is it called when you just wash at the sink with a rag? LOL

When I first moved here, I wanted to fill the tub with oil and sleep in it. The dry is complicated by wind here so my hair lives oiled and clamped up under a bandana or hat a LOT of the time. If I had a professional job, not sure what I would do.

Alina Green wrote:As someone who has grown up in more humid climates, when I go to the desert, my discomfort at dry eyes, bleeding nose, cracking and itching skin is so immense, I wonder if that would be doable for me.

Alina, I am sorry to hear of this.

This says to me why it is important to drink lots of water and use moisturizer.

Maybe some folks adapt differently than others to health issues that could be the result of different altitudes, temperatures, and humidity or lack of humidity.

A Wilderness First Responder course.

I definitely think some people do better in different humidity levels than others.  My sister finds it hard to breathe in Utah's dry air, and she thrives in the humidity of Michigan.  I find it hard to breathe in humid air, and I thrive in the super dry air of Utah.

I spent all of my childhood and teenage years living in humid places, so it's not like that's because it was what I was used to, either.  Every time we visited my grandparents in New Mexico, my asthma went away, and breathing became easier.

I definitely get sunburn, chapped lips, and itchy dry skin here more easily than in humid climates, but those are all trivial inconveniences compared to the joy of being able to breathe.

Advice 1. Choose plants adapted to the local climate.
Advice 2. Choose a gardener adapted to the local climate.

-lol-

I am finding my way with my homestead in the high planes desert of southwestern AZ... it. is. rough.... most people, when looking at a pros/cons list for homestead locations, would put places like this near the bottom, and I know why.  However, you can get land here for a low price, and because it's tough, many people come, try, and leave, which means you have an open view without other homes, cars, or noise (most of the time).  And there are just enough people doing it that you will have a few friends/neighbors to help when needed. The the resources are here, water is do-able, don't let people spook you out of trying.  And in exchange for the rigorous physical and mental/emotional challenge, the wisdom of the desert draws you into a Soul path that makes it worth it.  If you are called to find your way in the desert and explore living close to Mother Earth, have Faith and do it!

Shaun Overton has a great YouTube channel about improving 350 acres of desert land. Lots to learn there.

One of the issues he encountered was illegal immigrants. Worth a watch to see what you're getting into, in that regard.