[7][2] Named for the indigenous Mohave people, it is located primarily in southeastern California and southwestern Nevada, with small portions extending into Arizona and Utah.

The 54,000 sq mi (140,000 km2) desert supports a number of human activities, including recreation, ranching, and military training.

The mountains elevated along the length of the San Andreas fault provide a clear border between the Mojave Desert and the coastal regions to the west.

There are also abundant alluvial fans, which are called bajadas, that form around the mountains within the Mojave Desert and extend down toward the low altitude basins,[13] which contain dried lake beds called playas, where water generally collects and evaporates, leaving large volumes of salt.

[2] The Mojave Desert is also home to the Devils Playground, about 40 miles (64 km) of dunes and salt flats going in a northwest-southeasterly direction.

The Devil's Playground is a part of the Mojave National Preserve and is between the town of Baker, California and the Providence Mountains.

[16] There is an annual average precipitation of 2 to 6 inches (51 to 152 mm), although regions at high altitudes such as the portion of the Mojave Desert in the San Gabriel mountains may receive more rain.

[10][8] Most of the precipitation in the Mojave comes from the Pacific Cyclonic storms that are generally present passing eastward in November to April.

However, in the last few decades, invasive annual plants such as some within the genera Bromus, Schismus and Brassica have facilitated fires by serving as a fuel bed.

The oldest rocks in the area that now includes Death Valley National Park are extensively metamorphosed by intense heat and pressure and are at least 1700 million years old.

[31]: 44  Rifting thinned huge roughly linear parts of the supercontinent Rodinia enough to allow sea water to invade and divide its landmass into component continents separated by narrow straits.

[30]: 634  Carbonate banks formed on this part of the two margins only to be subsided as the continental crust thinned until it broke, giving birth to a new ocean basin.

An accretion wedge of clastic sediment then started to accumulate at the base of the submerged precipice, entombing the region's first known fossils of complex life.

Stretching of the crust under western North America started around 16 Ma and is thought to be caused by upwelling from the subducted spreading-zone of the Farallon Plate.

By 10,500 years ago these lakes were increasingly cut off from glacial melt from the Sierra Nevada, starving them of water and concentrating salts and minerals.

[10]: 124  Additionally, there have been deposits of copper, tin, lead-zinc, manganese, iron, and various radioactive substances but they have not been mined for commercial use.

[2] Mojave Desert flora is not a vegetation type, although the plants in the area have evolved in isolation because of the physical barriers of the Sierra Nevadas and the Colorado Plateau.

Predominant plants of the Mojave Desert include all-scale (Atriplex polycarpa), creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), brittlebush (Encelia farinosa), desert holly (Atriplex hymenelytra), white burrobush (Hymenoclea salsola), and most notably, the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia).

Less common but distinctive plants of the Mojave Desert include ironwood (Olneya tesota), blue Palo Verde (Parkinsonia Florida), chuparosa (Justicia californica), spiny menodora (Menodora spinescens), desert senna (Cassia armata), California dalea (Psorothamnus arborescens), and goldenhead (Acamptopappus shockleyi).

However, endemic fauna of the Mojave Desert include Kelso Dunes jerusalem cricket (Ammopelmatus kelsoensis), the Kelso Dunes shieldback katydid (Eremopedes kelsoensis), the Mohave ground squirrel (Spermophilus Mohavensis) and Amargosa vole (Microtus californicus scirpensis).

There are also aquatic species that are found nowhere else,[35] such as the Devils Hole pupfish, limited to one hot spring near Death Valley.

[36] Before the European colonization of North America, tribes of Native Americans, such as the Mohave, were hunter-gatherers living in the Mojave Desert.

Human development at the major urban and suburban centers of Las Vegas and Los Angeles has had an increasingly damaging effect on the wildlife of the Mojave Desert.

[2] An added demand for landfill space as a result of the large metropolitan centers of Las Vegas and Los Angeles also has the real potential to drastically affect flora and fauna of the Mojave Desert.

Agricultural development along the Colorado river, close to the Eastern boundary of the Mojave Desert, also causes habitat loss and degradation.

[42] The Mojave Desert is one of the most popular spots for tourism in North America, primarily because of the international destination of Las Vegas.

[44] However, the southwest and central east portions of the Mojave Desert are particularly threatened as a result of off-road vehicles, increasing recreational use, human development, and agricultural grazing.