By Michael R. Blood, AP

ADELANTO — Drive by the High Desert Truck Stop, turn down a rutted road by the bail bond signs, slip behind a steel fence edged with barbed wire, and you can glimpse the future of California’s emerging legal pot industry.

In a boxy warehouse marked only by a street number, an $8 million marijuana production plant — a farm, laboratory and factory all in one — is rising inside cavernous rooms crisscrossed by electrical cables.

Not far off, a retail shop is planned to sell edible, thin strips infused with cannabis extract and powerful concentrates known as resins that also will be shipped to stores around the state.

California has long been known for its boutique pot market, producing world-famous buds on small plots in the so-called Emerald Triangle, north of San Francisco. Broad legalization starts Jan. 1, and this will be a test of whether bigger is better.

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