Yup! I actually forgot about Gerlach being associated with Burning Man (never been, myself). It just comes up when you search for "cheapest land in America." A

Yup! I actually forgot about Gerlach being associated with Burning Man (never been, myself). It just comes up when you search for "cheapest land in America." And yeah, my point is the same as yours -- it's always the location that matters. If you can somehow bootstrap yourself a desert-mega city in the world's worst location, then agglomeration effects take over and the land becomes valuable because people want to be next to other people. But typically desert cities get off the ground because there's something about the initial conditions of that particular piece of desert that's more interesting than everything around it (that's what happened with Phoenix with regards to the canals/water). Of course, once a critical mass of settlers shows up and sticks around long enough, wherever they happened to congregate is the most valuable location in the local area from then on.