Chiriaco Summit, California
| Chiriaco Summit | |
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| Unincorporated community | |
The Chiriaco Summit Coffee Shop, October 6, 2012
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 Chiriaco Summit
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| Coordinates: 33°39′39″N 115°43′17″W / 33.66083°N 115.72139°WCoordinates: 33°39′39″N 115°43′17″W / 33.66083°N 115.72139°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| County | Riverside |
| Time zone | Pacific (PST) (UTC-8) |
| • Summer (DST) | PDT (UTC-7) |
| ZIP code | 92201 |
| Area code(s) | 442 and 760 |
| GNIS feature ID | 240569 |
Chiriaco Summit is a small unincorporated community and travel stop located along Interstate 10 in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. It lies 19 miles (31 km) west of Desert Center on the divide between the Chuckwalla Valley and the Salton Sea basin at an elevation of 1,706 feet (520 m).
The ZIP Code is 92201, and the community is inside area codes 442 and 760.
The town has a general aviation airport, Chiriaco Summit Airport. A California Department of Transportation rest stop on Interstate 10, west of Chiriaco Summit, is called "Cactus City", an ironic name referring to a non-existent city.
Originally known as Shaver Summit, Chiriaco Summit is the high point of Box Canyon Road, a gravel road that paralleled the Bradshaw Trail from the Coachella Valley to Blythe. The land was purchased by Joe Chiriaco, an entrepreneur from Alabama. After traveling west to attend a college football game in the Rose Bowl in 1925, he decided to stay and found employment with the Los Angeles Bureau of Water and Power (now Los Angeles Department of Water and Power or LADWP). He heard of plans to pave Box Canyon Road, so he purchased Shaver Summit and broke ground on a service station and general store. The hearsay proved true, and on August 15, 1933, the same day that cars began traveling over the brand-new U.S. Route 60, Shaver Summit was open for business.
Even more bustle came to the area when construction began on the Colorado River Aqueduct in the mid-1930s. This project of epic scale, which brought water to Riverside from Lake Havasu, tunneled through the mountains north of town. Joe worked on the project as a surveyor. Around this time, he met his wife, Ruth, a nurse from the Coachella Valley.
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