Behind the magic and mystery of the fabled desert paradise.
In the opening scenes of the CBS television series Northern Exposure, set in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, a moose wanders through the seemingly abandoned town, before finally happening upon a mural proclaiming “Roslyn Café: An Oasis.” The mural depicts a camel with the town’s mountainous backdrop, and the moose wanders in front, almost as if to take the place of the camel in the oasis scene.
It’s unlikely that many residents in the fictional Alaskan town (or Roslyn, Washington, where exteriors for the series were filmed, and where the Roslyn Café mural still exists) had any familiarity at all with an actual oasis, which is an island of fertile land surrounded by arid desert.
The notion of the oasis has been used as a descriptor for any business that might serve as an escapist refuge from the dreary day-to-day, and it has been part of the Western cultural zeitgeist from its very beginnings. Oases are common in desert regions, particularly the Sahara, Arabia, and the Levant (the region stretching from Lebanon to Sinai).
Not surprisingly, areas of verdancy in the middle of the desert are mentioned a number of times in religious texts like the Bible and the Quran (although the Quran refers to them in its Arabic form waha), using the metaphor of refuge and abundance as an allegory for divine attention and protection. In Exodus, while wandering through the desert, the Israelites take refuge in an oasis called Elim, shaded by 70 palm trees and watered by underground wells.
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As a literary device, the oasis is almost always used in connection with haven or refuge, which offers characters a chance to take respite and self-reflect, since the external dangers of more inhospitable environments have allowed them to devote less energy to simple existence, and give more mind to self-actualization. This is why oases are also a common trope in hospitality settings—like the “oasis” in Roslyn—they’re places to have your needs met.
A Natural Saharan Oasis
In history, oases were vital to trade and travel in desert environments, particularly along the Silk Road from Europe to China. Much of the overland route traversed various deserts, hopping from freshwater source to freshwater source. In western Egypt, the oasis of Siwa was so remote it wasn’t connected to the rest of the kingdom until the domestication of the camel. Alexander the Great famously visited the oasis circa 330 BCE to reach an oracle he felt would legitimize his claims as ruler of Egypt.
Today, Siwa is a popular stop for tourism, with its Indigenous Bedouin culture, Roman and Ptolemaic ruins, and baths. One of the most well-known baths is called Cleopatra’s Bath, where the historic figure herself is rumored to have bathed. Another is Bir Wahed, a natural hot spring which bubbles like a jetted tub. Perhaps most attractive is that while the oasis is a visitor attraction, its remoteness from the well-traveled tourist path along the Nile River means it gets far fewer tourists.
Oases in the United States
In the United States, several western cities grew from natural oases. In the Mojave Desert, a historical natural spring led early Spanish explorers to name the area Las Vegas or “The Meadows.” Las Vegas is, now, of course, the largest city in the state of Nevada, and a top visitor destination. The springs provided a water stop for travelers crossing the desert to California until the construction of the Hoover Dam created the Lake Mead reservoir from the Colorado River in the 1930s.
The natural springs stopped flowing to the surface in the 1960s when the growing city’s water needs dropped the water table, but there are a number of other underground springs that various resorts tap for water. The Bellagio, for example, doesn’t use any of the city’s water resources for its man-made lake—it’s fed entirely from an underground spring on the property that the resort owns the water rights to, essentially making the resort’s lake a literal oasis unto itself.
Palm Springs, California, is another town that has long been something of an oasis. Although it’s situated in one of the hottest deserts in the country, the combination of natural springs and hot springs, springtime snowmelt from the nearby San Jacinto mountains, and cool canyons providing shade during the summer have drawn human inhabitation for thousands of years. The Cahuilla people called it Se-Khi, or “Boiling Water.”
By the 20th century, scientists had studied the microclimate effects of oases in desert environments and found that the best-managed ones in the Middle East had a specific, layered approach to cultivation. A “top layer” of date palms provided a layer of shade and food for the plants and animals below. A middle layer of trees that preferred partial shade, including figs, olives, apricots, and peaches followed, and the bottom layer, which requires the most moisture, is for growing cereals like wheat or barley.
Thus, date palms were imported to Palm Springs and nearby Palm Desert in the 1920s, which by itself spurred a treat that is still enjoyed in and around Palm Springs today: the date shake.
Developed Oases
Most of the oases in the Middle East also require man-made irrigation from groundwater, as natural oases typically have quite a small footprint without human intervention, but the advent of modern irrigation has also created a new type of oasis: the entirely man-made one.
In Dubai, the Al Marmoom Desert Conservation Reserve and the Al Qudra Lakes are a man-made oasis and series of desert lakes, spanning about 10% of the total land area of the Emirate, which is otherwise desert. Because of the source of fresh water, the reserve has attracted the largest population of the Arabian oryx in Dubai, and also the country’s highest concentration of large flamingos, plus hundreds of other species of native resident birds and migratory birds.
Whether travelers find themselves luxuriating in an oasis-turned-megacity like Las Vegas or a tranquil nature preserve, there’s little denying the hold that the romantic notion of the oasis has on travelers. It’s perhaps best encapsulated in the 1973 Maria Muldaur lounge hit “Midnight at The Oasis,” an escapist fantasy about a desert love affair:
Midnight at the oasis
Send your camel to bed
Shadows painting our faces
Traces of romance in our heads
Heaven’s holding a half-moon
Shining just for us
Let’s slip off to a sand dune, real soon
And kick up a little dust
