The Small Tract Act encouraged a particular kind of settlement: aspirational, minimally funded, and frequently temporary. The five-acre parcels in Wonder Valley were sometimes called jackrabbit homesteads — small enough that the land itself offered little agricultural potential, intended instead as weekend getaways or retirement retreats for working-class Californians who could not afford the coast.

The structures built to meet the Act's requirements were often simple: a single room, sometimes less. The materials available in the desert were limited; the water was scarce; the summers reached temperatures that made weekend occupation impractical. Of the thousands of cabins built during the homesteading years, the majority were eventually abandoned. The owners' plans — to retire here, to spend weekends here, to build something larger eventually — did not survive contact with the actual conditions of desert life.

Wonder Valley occupies a flat basin at elevations ranging from approximately 1,200 to 1,800 feet, east of Twentynine Palms and south of the Sheep Hole and Bullion Mountains, with the Pinto Mountains forming a horizon to the north. Interstate 62 (Twentynine Palms Highway) runs through the valley, connecting it to Twentynine Palms roughly ten miles to the west and continuing east toward Parker, Arizona.

The terrain is open desert — creosote scrub, Joshua trees at the higher reaches, sandy washes that can fill with water during the infrequent rains that the Mojave delivers. The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center begins not far to the north; Joshua Tree National Park lies to the south. Wonder Valley sits between these controlled territories, neither park nor base, its abandoned cabins distributed across private parcels still technically owned by the descendants of the original homesteaders or by whoever purchased them since.

Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating through the 2000s, Wonder Valley attracted a different kind of settler: artists, writers, and the desert-drawn who found cheap land and isolation more appealing than liability. The abandoned cabins, available for low prices, became studios and residences. The same qualities that had defeated the original homesteaders — remoteness, heat, lack of services — became assets for people who wanted those conditions.

The community that has formed is loose, independent, and characteristically difficult to characterize. Some residents live there full time; others use cabins seasonally. The proximity to Joshua Tree National Park brings visitors who discover the valley's character in passing. The abandoned cabins continue to outnumber the occupied ones, but the ratio has been shifting.