ON THE WESTERN EDGE OF ARIZONA LIES A LITTLE WATER RESERVOIR CALLED LAKE HAVASU.

Internationally renowned for its graphic party scene—drawing spring breakers, winter vacationers, and those interested in a little spring fling from the college campuses of North America—this little lake is not just a party spot for thousands of toned, tanned, and buff ASU students. It may have Copper Canyon, a cove where the lugubrious and unchaste cavort, knee deep in the sun flush water of a desert reservoir, drunk on the dry arid light and ice cold Smirnoff Ice, but that’s not all there is to this desert bastion. For the stringent outdoorsman this wet paradise offers plenty of wholesome activities.

While a floating orgy engages in hedonistic reverie not seen since the unfettered sensuality of Caligula’s court, the history buff can pay a visit to the London Bridge. Bought and moved from the Thames to Havasu in 1962 by Robert P. McCulloch of the oil McCullochs, the London Bridge serves as the necessary connection between McCulloch’s luxurious, planned community and the vast plebeian wasteland of America. The bridge spans a narrow manufactured canal that acts as both a physical and psychological barrier between these two worlds. For a fully immersive experience, visitors can pay a visit to the once lavish and now deteriorated English village built to bolster the clout of this desert bridge. The formerly opulent Tudor homes add a point of uncanny excitement for the sophisticated traveler.

Though this lake was built to hold and store water that will be used to nurture and coddle the under appreciated agrarian fields of the Southwest; water that will flow through the faucets and showers of suburban communities, outlying townships, and major metropolitan areas, the local government has yet to check the aggressive exchange of bodily fluids taking place in these precious waters. Is this a nod to Southwesterners’ hearty constitution? Recognition of desert dwellers’ unassailable individuality? Or is it the manifestation of a conflict that so often occurs at the border of culture and belief?

Whatever the case the young and the old continue to flock to Lake Havasu, a lake that should not be, and despite this, despite it’s synthetic manifestation, continues to etch lasting memories into the minds of these very real visitors. Memories that will exist long after the lake has gone brackish or dry. Memories of mirth and mayhem; solitude and temperance, discovery and vexation. This is a desert mirage that only exists because of you, make it what you will.