Voted the Best Recreational Area by Independent readers in the latest Best of Coachella Valley poll, Joshua Tree National Park is a wonderland of giant boulders and unique desert flora and fauna. The park’s endemic namesake, the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), features spikey arms stretching skyward; they help give an ethereal feel to the distinctive landscape.
The tree itself was named by Mormon settlers who crossed the Mojave Desert in the mid-1800s. The Joshua Tree’s unique shape reminded them of a biblical story in which Joshua reached his hands up to the sky in prayer.
Joshua Tree National Park sprawls over portions of two major North American deserts—the higher-elevation Mojave Desert and the lower-lying Colorado Desert, a sub-region of the larger Sonoran Desert. The change in elevation takes visitors from one distinctive ecosystem to another, with the Little San Bernardino Mountains separating the park from the Coachella Valley
The western Mojave Desert is the habitat of the Joshua tree. In addition to Joshua tree forests (which are found above 2,000 feet in elevation), the western park includes numerous huge loose boulders that have attracted rock climbers and scrambling enthusiasts. There are also campgrounds, picnic areas and numerous hiking trails. The lower-elevation eastern part of the park features different flora, including ocotillo, desert saltbush, yucca and cholla cactus. There are several interesting sites in the lower desert, including the Cholla Cactus Garden and the Ocotillo Patch.
The first known occupants of Joshua Tree were hunters called the Pintos who lived in the area between 8,000 and 4,000 BCE. Later, other groups of indigenous peoples—including the Serrano, Cahuilla and Chemehuevi—lived in small villages, most notably in the Oasis of Mara area near the park’s north entrance.
The first known European sightings of Joshua trees were by Pedro Fages, who led a Spanish expedition into the area in 1772, looking for deserters from the Spanish Army. In 1826, explorer Jedediah Smith led a group of American fur trappers along the nearby Mojave Trail, and other Americans soon followed.
By the 1870s,white settlers began placing cattle in the land that now makes up the park. The cattle attracted a gang of rustlers who moved into the region near the Oasis of Mara in 1888. Led by brothers James B. and William S. McHaney, they hid stolen cattle in a box canyon at what is now known as Cow Camp, which was later used as a line camp for cattle ranchers.
Along with the cattle ranchers came the miners. Between the 1860s and the 1940s, miners worked about 300 pit mines in what later became the park. The Lost Horse Mine was the most successful, producing gold and silver worth about $5 million in today’s dollars.
Local ranchers dug wells and built rainwater catchments called “tanks,” such as White Tank and Barker Dam, built by Charles Omar Barker in 1900. Barker had come to Southern California in 1883 seeking a more healthful climate. He settled in Banning, where he served as president and manager of the Banning Water Company; he was also a miner and cattleman. His original Barker Dam was later improved by William F. “Bill” Keys, another local rancher who continued cattle-grazing in the park through 1945. Barker Dam was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Story of Bill Keys
Keys was born in 1879 and left home at the age of 15 to begin working at mills, mines and cattle ranches. In 1910, Keys arrived in the Twentynine Palms area, where he was employed at the Desert Queen Mine as custodian and assayer. After the owner’s death, Keys gained possession of the mine as payment for back wages. In 1917, he filed on an 80-acre homestead under the Homestead Act and began to build a ranch in the area of the mine. He soon married Frances May Lawton, and the couple had seven children between 1919 and 1931, three of whom died during childhood.
Eventually, the Keys’ homestead included a ranch house, a store, two schoolhouses, outhouses, sheds, a stamp mill, a corral, a supply yard, an orchard, a windmill, irrigation systems, rock retaining walls and a cemetery. Today, the National Park Service offers ranger-guided walking tours of the ranch.
Keys became renowned for an unfortunate incident: He was convicted of manslaughter for shooting fellow rancher Worth Bagley over a land- and water-access dispute.
Bagley, a former deputy sheriff, was known to be confrontational and had been blocking access to roads that Keys used. On May 11, 1943, Bagley allegedly ambushed Keys, and during the altercation, Keys fatally shot Bagley. While pleading self-defense, Keys was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison. While serving time in San Quentin State Prison, his wife contacted lawyer/mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, a frequent Joshua Tree visitor and friend, who found enough inconsistencies in the case to get Keys paroled. Keys was released on Oct. 25, 1948, and received a full pardon by Gov. Goodwin Knight in 1956. He returned to his Desert Queen Ranch, where he died in 1969.
To mark the site of the 1943 shootout, Keys placed a stone inscribed, “Here is where Worth Bagley bit the dust at the hand of W.F. Keys, May 11, 1943.” The original stone, vandalized in 2014, is now preserved in the Joshua Tree National Park museum, with a metal replica at the site. The metal replica is on the Wall Street Mill trail, one of numerous trails in the park.
Minerva Hoyt’s Conservation Efforts
In the early 1920s, people began venturing into the area in automobiles—and truckloads of desert plants were being carted off to be sold for a growing landscaping industry.
Attention became focused on the deserts thanks to Pasadena socialite Minerva Hoyt, who created the International Desert Conservation League. Her lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., led to President Franklin Roosevelt declaring the Joshua Tree area as a national monument in 1936.
Hoyt has been memorialized with a mural at the park’s visitor center in Twentynine Palms, painted in 2014, and a nearby plaque. Each year, the Joshua Tree National Park Association gives out the Minerva Hamilton Hoyt Desert Conservation Award to someone who has worked to preserve the desert. In 2012, one of the park’s peaks was renamed Mount Minerva Hoyt.
The monument was redesignated as Joshua Tree National Park in 1994 as part of the California Desert Protection Act. In signing the bill, President Bill Clinton said, “The broad vistas, the rugged mountain ranges, and the evidence of the human past are treasures that merit protection on behalf of the American people.”
Encompassing a total area of 1,242 square miles, Joshua Tree National Park is slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. Today, 3 million annual visitors make it the 11th-most-visited U.S. national park (of 63).
Sources for this article include Walking California’s Desert Parks by John McKinney (Harper Collins, 1996); “William Keys,” by Meghan Barrett Cousino, National Registry of Exonerations, University of Michigan Law School; and William F. Keys of Joshua Tree National Park by Thomas Crochetiere (2023).
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