Desert Rat Scrap Book

The Desert Rat Scrap Book (or DRSB) was a roughly quarterly southwestern humor publication based in Thousand Palms, California.

DRSB was published in editions of 10,000 to 20,000 copies, whenever its creator, Harry Oliver had sufficient material and enough money to pay the printer.

DRSB was devoted to lore, legends, lies and laughs of the American Southwest region, especially featuring prospectors and other desert rats.

The DRSB was published in a unique format, printed on both sides of heavy creme-colored stock of about 17 x 22 inches (43.3 x 55.5 centimetres) (Demy) paper size, folded double three times to yield "the smallest newspaper in the world and the only 5-page one... only newspaper in America you can open in the wind."

1888–1999 Fort Commander, Publisher, Distributor, Lamp Lighter, Editor, Artist, Gardener, Janitor, Owner Following would be an 'editorial', various 'news' items and gags and aphorisms or factoids (original or clipped from other sources) under old-time fonts headings, interspersed with small block prints and/or cartoons of desert characters.

Along the bottom of this largest page might be a few advertisements, for ghost towns and publications and date farms and rock shops.

PAGE FIVE, above the mailing address block, might contain a list of conversation starters, or more gags and news and quotes, or a promotion for Oliver's audio album of readings, or maybe just a large woodcut and an essay or mini-epic poem.

Just one issue, Packet Four of Pouch Four, named DESERT RAT HARRY OLIVER'S JOKE BOOK, did not follow the above formats.

Just as Oliver's design of Gold Gulch, at the San Diego World's Fair (California Pacific International Exposition) of 1935–36, strongly influenced the development of Western theme parks and frontier village reconstructions, so his DRSB can be seen to help shape subsequent Western Americana literary ephemera.