Guide To Joshua Tree National Park

Above, the entrance to Joshua Tree National Park a few miles north of Interstate 10. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The closest national park to the City of Los Angeles is Joshua Tree National Park.

As it is, the park gets a lot of visitors during the year. I last visited it in 2015 and camped at the park's Cottonwood Campground.

Thrillist has posted a guide to Joshua Tree National Park.

They begin with:

The Mojave Desert has inspired a number of monumental artistic endeavors, including the fictional planet Tatooine in Star Wars and the iconic U2 album The Joshua Tree. Joshua Tree National Park actually lies within the boundaries of both the Mojave Desert in the west and the Colorado Desert in the east, but the landscape within the park is wholly unique to itself. 

Joshua Tree National Park gets its name from the tree species Yucca brevifolia, which is more commonly known as the “Joshua Tree.” Legend has it that Mormon settlers heading west bestowed this name on the unique plants that are only found in the Mjave, but that story has been debated and remains unverified. Still, there’s an absolute ton of geological and anthropological history in the area; multiple indigineous groups settled the area as early as 4,000-8,000 thousand years ago. 

Nowadays, the park and surrounding areas serve as a haven for the artistically-inclined, UFOlogists, solitude seekers, and otherwise offbeat creatives drawn to the power of the desert. Ken Layne, a writer, podcaster, and publisher of Desert Oracle (a desert-based publication and radio show) has lived in the area for years. He calls it a “one-of-a-kind place” with a “mix of weird geology and wide-open skies.”  

David Smith, Joshua Tree’s park superintendent with the National Park Service, says there’s a magnetism to the region. “People come to Joshua Tree for their own individual reasons. Sometimes it’s wilderness. Other times people come here for the music history, the diversity of raptors, or just the epic landscapes. People come to Joshua Tree to find themselves." 

From a dome built by telepathic instructions received from aliens to a sleepy saloon that’s hosted musicians like Paul McCartney, there’s no shortage of funky, fun, and sometimes freaky things to do and see in and around Joshua Tree National Park. Here's how to do it all.

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