Here's a photo I took on January 20, 1979, FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, of an eastbound "Super Van" led by Centennial unit 6907 near Dry Lake, NV as seen from the Interstate 15 overpass.

Here's a GOOGLE Streetview image that shows that the area really hasn't changed all that much, but with the way Las Vegas is growing, there will probably be some changes in the next forty-five years.

[maps.app.goo.gl]

When UP was running the California Livestock Specials that hauled live hogs from Nebraska to the Clougherty slaughter house in Vernon, CA, Dry Lake was one of the places where the animals were watered and sprayed down.

Here's a L.A. Times article from JUN 11, 2022 covering the closing of the Clougherty Packing / Farmer John slaughter house:

[archive.is]

From Wikipedia:

In 2013 WH Group, then known as Shuanghui Group, purchased Smithfield Foods for $4.72 billion. It was the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date. The acquisition of Smithfield's 146,000 acres of land made WH Group, headquartered in Luohe, Henan province, one of the largest overseas owners of American farmland.

In 2016, Smithfield Foods purchased the California pork processor Clougherty Packing PLC for $145 million, along with its Farmer John and Saag's Specialty Meats brands.

In 2023 the plant closed and by May of 2024 the facility was torn down.

Maybe they'll convert the real estate in Vernon where the plant was located into a shopping mall, as has been done with the UniRoyal Tire factory in Commerce, the North American Rockwell plant in Downey, the Lockheed plant in Burbank, the GM plant in Van Nuys, the Autonetics Rockwell plant in Anaheim, the Ford plant in Pico Rivera . . . did I miss any? After all, we can always use a few more shopping malls. Right? *sarcasm*