Like many other towns in inland California, Lancaster was literally created by the railroad, where no settlement existed before the coming of the steel tracks. When the Southern Pacific Railroad passed through the western Mojave Desert, the site of Lancaster was established—first only as a siding in the summer of 1876. The actual town was born when Moses Langley Wicks, a prominent real estate developer in southern California, purchased 60 sections of land from Southern Pacific and had the town surveyed and recorded on February 16, 1884. Officially incorporated in 1977, the city is located in Antelope Valley, approximately 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles.