The Boring Co.’s site in the Mojave Desert.
Photographer: Todd Midler for Bloomberg BusinessweekElon Musk’s Boring Company Finds Paradise in Town With ‘Plenty of Dirt’
His tunneling venture likes laid-back regulators and low taxes. In California, Adelanto had that—plus lots of dirt.
One night two Januaries ago, Jessie Flores made a series of frantic calls and texts to his deputies, with a request: Could they clear their schedules to get to Elon Musk’s offices in Los Angeles for a meeting?
Flores is the city manager of Adelanto, Calif., a scrubby, mountain-shadowed city of 37,000 in the southwestern Mojave Desert known chiefly for its prisons. Adelanto’s mayor, Gabriel Reyes, is a currency trader who works out of a ramshackle strip-mall office in nearby Hesperia. But mayor is a part-time gig here, and the city manager, who’s appointed by the city council, is the full-time chief executive—in charge of finance, land use, and economic development.