The Desert View Tower is located on Interstate 8, in Boulder Park, in western Imperial County, Southern California.

[3] An historical plaque next to the tower marks the site of the Mountain Springs Station, a stone house used in 1862-1870 as a store from which ox teams pulled wagons up a 30% grade.

[5] The stone tower was built over several years beginning in 1922 by Bert Vaughn, a San Diego real estate developer who owned Jacumba.

An ensemble of sculptures of animals and other figures, called Boulder Park, is adjacent to Desert View Tower.

They were sculpted in the local stone by Merle Ratcliff (spelling of his name varies across different sources) over two years during the 1930s while he was unemployed during the Great Depression.