Elbia Escalera, a crossing guard for the city of El Centro for 18 years, stands watch as students from nearby Wilson Junior High School cross a busy city intersection. She is joined by her partner, Yolanda Staton (pictured to the left). Together they help students cross both in the morning and in the afternoon and pride themselves on the fact no student has been hurt crossing the street on their watch.

In the morning hours before the start of the school day, Elbia Escalera stands watch at her post, a corner on one of El Centro’s busiest thoroughfares along Imperial Avenue where motorists make their way north and south along the four-lane roadway.

Escalera is waiting and mindful of everything happening around her, as is her partner Yolanda Staton.

They have to be. It is their duty.

When children appear at the corner of Holt Avenue, her

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On a hot summer day, children gather at the Heber community library, part of the Imperial County Free Public Library system. The children are participating in a Family Literacy Program designed for children ages five and younger.

On a typically hot June day, as temperatures began their climb to triple digits, Angelica Escobar sang with her 17-mont-old granddaughter, Scarlett Harmon, inside the Heber community library. When the song finished, they sat and listened to library staff member Rocia Medina read from a book with a finger puppet rising from the pages.

Scarlett giggled and couldn’t help but reach for the book.

That’s exactly what her grandmother wanted to see, and it’s what library staff members get excited about because the hope is that Scarlett and so many young children like her are taking their first steps toward becoming life-long readers when they engage in such activities.

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Lynn Housouer, chief executive officer of Pioneers Park Museum in the Imperial Valley, is photographed at the museum’s entrance next to a statue of Mobley Meadows, the first sheriff of Imperial County. Pioneers Museum is dedicated to preserving and showcasing the hundred-plus year history of Imperial County. On Feb. 2, the museum will hold its annual Pioneers’ Day, a free event featuring activities that teach about the region’s history and the pioneers who turned a harsh desert into a landscape where crops and a community could flourish.

The year was 1928—a mere 20 years after pioneers founded Imperial County and turned a barren desert on the southeastern tip of California into a region where lands could become fertile and farming could prosper.

With the passing of the Boulder Canyon Project Act that year, which would lead to the construction of

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