Places

Public Law 103-433, signed October 31, 1994. The statute that made Joshua Tree a national park.

A huge freestanding boulder north of Landers. The rock is solid. The stories stacked on it are not all equally solid.

Old Woman Springs Road. The north route out of Yucca Valley through Landers and Johnson Valley.

Twentynine Palms Highway, State Route 62. The basin’s main street from the Morongo grade to the park’s north gate.

Serrano, Chemehuevi, Cahuilla, and Mojave peoples have ties to this desert. This entry points to their own publications.

George Van Tassel’s dome near Landers. He said the purpose was given to him. Today it is a booked sound-bath site on a rural road.

A national monument in 1936, a national park since October 31, 1994. Two deserts, and the reason Highway 62 gets crowded.

The unincorporated village between Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms: a 1937 townsite, homestead cabins, a community college, and a long run of artists and musicians.

Gold claims on Goat Mountain, a post office in a weekend cabin, and the name on the 1992 M7.3 earthquake.

The Marine Corps base east of Twentynine Palms. Training, noise, jobs, and a shared-use slice of Johnson Valley.

The everyday name for these towns between the mountain pass and the base. Not a synonym for the whole High Desert.

The public schools for the basin towns, on a calendar that bends for wind, dust, and heat.

The first basin town up the grade from Palm Springs: a Serrano spring, a cattle canyon, and now one of the desert’s great birding preserves.

An unincorporated live-in Western set north of Yucca Valley. People reside there; Mane Street is not a closed theme park.

An oasis town on the Pinto Mountain Fault: Serrano village, veterans’ health refuge, glider school, and today the city beside the Marine base.

A stage stop called Lone Star that became the basin’s shopping town, then voted itself a Town in 1991 by eleven votes.