Quartzsite is a town in La Paz County, Arizona, United States.

Quartzsite's current location was the site of a waterhole from 1863 to the 1880s and was later a stage station, called Tyson's Wells, along the La Paz - Wikenburg Road on Tyson Wash, in what was then Yuma County, in the newly created Arizona Territory.

[4]: xxvii  [5][6] [7] Tyson's Wells in 1875 was described by Martha Summerhayes, in her book Vanished Arizona: At all events, whatever Messrs. Hunt and Dudley were doing down there, their ranch (Desert Station) was clean and attractive, which was more than could be said of the place where we stopped the next night, a place called Tysons Wells.

We slept in our tent that night, for of all places on the earth a poorly kept ranch in Arizona is the most melancholy and uninviting.

[8]: 144–145 In the valley around Tyson's Wells were places known to have been successfully worked by individual prospectors since the beginning of the Colorado River Gold Rush of the 1860s up until the 1950s.

[10] In March 2006, 70-year-old Betty Lou Japel and 73-year-old Kenneth Miller were shot and killed by Gregory Cole.

[11][12] According to the United States Census Bureau Quartzsite is all land and has a total area of 36.3 sq mi (94.0 km2).

Quartzsite lies on the western portion of the La Posa Plain along Tyson Wash.

In the middle of summer, Quartzsite is one of the hottest places in the United States and has recorded temperatures as high as 122 °F or 50.0 °C on July 28, 1995.

The Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, an annual gathering of vandwellers, takes place in January.

Wasteland Scenario Designer Ken St. Andre, a lifelong resident of Phoenix, Arizona, confirmed that Quartz is fictionalized version of the real town of "Quartzite" [sic].