50 Fun Facts About Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park lies a few hours' drive east of which big city?

Los Angeles. When desert gardens came into fashion there, landscapers dug up so many cacti that the plunder set off the campaign to protect the area.

Joshua Tree National Park straddles which two deserts?

Mojave and Colorado. Elevation draws the line: Joshua trees grow in the Mojave uplands, while the low, hot Colorado Desert is ocotillo country.

The Joshua tree is actually what kind of plant?

A yucca. The Joshua tree sits in the agave family, not among the true trees, and it can send up new stems from its roots after a fire or flood.

Which group is commonly credited with naming the Joshua tree after a biblical figure?

Mormon settlers are said to have seen the biblical Joshua in its upraised branches, but no record from the time confirms the tale.

Which kind of insect is the Joshua tree's sole pollinator, laying its eggs inside the flowers?

A moth. The female spreads pollen as she lays her eggs inside the flowers, and her larvae eat only some of the seeds, leaving the rest to grow.

Fossil dung shows which extinct Ice Age animal fed on Joshua trees and may have spread their seeds?

Shasta ground sloth. Its dung, preserved in a cave near Las Vegas, is full of Joshua tree leaves, fruit and seeds, so the long-extinct animal may once have carried the seeds for miles.

Which president proclaimed Joshua Tree a national monument in the 1930s?

Franklin D. Roosevelt. Campaigners wanted more than a million acres, but tracts of railroad land had to be left out, and his 1936 proclamation covered about 825,000.

Which Pasadena socialite and desert-plant campaigner is credited with winning protection for Joshua Tree?

Minerva Hoyt staged lavish desert-plant shows in New York, Boston and London to win the desert admirers, and a peak in the park was named for her in 2012.

Which 1994 law turned the monument into Joshua Tree National Park?

California Desert Protection Act. Senator Alan Cranston first introduced it in 1986, and it took eight years and Senator Dianne Feinstein to get it signed.

At about 795,000 acres, Joshua Tree National Park is slightly larger than which US state?

Rhode Island. Most of that land is managed as wilderness with no roads or buildings, so the bulk of the park can be reached only on foot or horseback.

Joshua Tree's famous piles of rounded boulders are made of a type of which rock?

Granite, of a kind called monzogranite. Groundwater seeping along its joints rounded the blocks while they were still buried, and flash floods later stripped the soil to leave the piles.

About how old are Joshua Tree National Park's oldest rocks?

1.7 billion years. That ancient gneiss formed deep beneath a long-vanished mountain system, more than a billion years before the rock of the park's famous boulder piles.

Which fault runs just southwest of Joshua Tree National Park, with related faults such as the Blue Cut crossing inside it?

San Andreas. Faults do the park a favour: they force groundwater up to the surface, and that is where its palm oases grow.

Which body of water can be seen from Joshua Tree's roadside lookout over the Coachella Valley?

Salton Sea. On a clear day it glints far below the lookout, but smog blowing in from nearby cities can hide the view.

The desert fan palm, which shades oases in Joshua Tree National Park, holds what distinction?

Only palm native to California. Fire is its ally: the thick trunk survives flames that clear away rival plants and help its seedlings get started.

Which spring at Twentynine Palms, long a Native village site, now sits beside Joshua Tree's park headquarters?

Oasis of Mara. Tradition says the Serrano planted its first 29 palms, which gave the town its name, around springs that rise where a fault blocks the groundwater.

Joshua Tree's earliest known residents, whose spear points were found in a park basin in the 1930s, are called what?

Pinto Culture. Amateur archaeologists Elizabeth and William Campbell collected the hunters' spear points along a dried-up channel in the Pinto Basin and first described them.

Which American general trained troops for desert warfare beside Joshua Tree during the Second World War?

George S. Patton. In 1942 he set up the Desert Training Center at Camp Young, just south of the monument, to ready tank crews to fight in North Africa.

The McHaney brothers, who settled near Twentynine Palms in the late 1800s, were reputed to run what kind of gang?

Cattle rustlers. Legend has the gang driving stolen herds in from Arizona and Mexico, and it seized the Desert Queen gold mine after one of its men shot the finder.

What was the most successful of the roughly 300 mines worked in the Joshua Tree area?

Lost Horse Mine. Johnny Lang is said to have named it after his horses strayed nearby, and it went on to yield more than 10,000 ounces of gold.

What reportedly cost Johnny Lang his share of Joshua Tree's most successful mine?

Stealing its gold. As the story goes, Lang skimmed from the mill he supervised until his partners caught on and gave him a choice: sell his share or go to jail.

Which rancher and miner built the Desert Queen Ranch, now shown on ranger-led tours in Joshua Tree National Park?

Bill Keys took over the McHaney homestead, renamed it after a nearby gold mine and ran a mill that crushed other miners' ore.

The rancher who built Joshua Tree's Desert Queen Ranch was sent to San Quentin for what?

Shooting a neighbour. He killed the man in 1943 in a feud over the road to his ore mill, was convicted of manslaughter and served about five years before winning a full pardon.

Which author and former lawyer won the Desert Queen Ranch's jailed owner a pardon?

Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, believed the rancher had been unfairly convicted; his appeals won the man's release and, in 1956, a governor's pardon.

Which miner and cattleman gave his name to the dam he built around 1900 at a Joshua Tree rainwater tank?

C.O. Barker. His cattle company's dam was raised half a century later, and when its pool holds water it draws desert bighorn sheep and a steady stream of hikers.

Why did Joshua Tree rangers close Rattlesnake Canyon and a historic dam to visitors in 2013?

Graffiti and vandalism. Rangers found the canyon tagged and names scratched into the dam, and blamed vandals who showed off their handiwork on social media.

Why did rock climbers first flock to Joshua Tree?

A winter stand-in for Yosemite. When cold shut down the big Sierra walls, its regulars came south to practise on dry desert rock, which only later became a destination in its own right.

Which Joshua Tree rock formation stands right beside Park Boulevard, just east of Jumbo Rocks campground?

Skull Rock. Water collecting in small pockets slowly ate two hollows into the boulder, leaving what look like the eye sockets of a skull.

In 2017 Joshua Tree won an international designation for protecting which natural resource?

Dark night skies. The park was named an International Dark Sky Park, and many visitors see the Milky Way there for the first time in their lives.

Which threatened reptile of Joshua Tree's creosote flats gets much of its water from the plants it eats?

Desert tortoise. It stores water in its bladder for the dry months, which is why a frightened tortoise that empties it may die of thirst.

Which native bird alone thrived as Mojave Desert birdlife collapsed over the past century?

Common raven. Researchers retracing bird surveys from the early 1900s found no other native species had gained much ground, and named falling rainfall as the main cause of the losses.

Where in Joshua Tree are its namesake trees expected to hold out as the climate warms?

Higher ground. Rangers protect these cooler, wetter pockets as refuges, because forecasts have warming erasing most of the trees' habitat elsewhere in the park.

Which invaders are blamed for making Joshua Tree's wildfires hotter and more destructive?

Non-native grasses such as red brome dry into a carpet of tinder that carries flames quickly across the desert, and most Joshua trees that burn do not survive.

Which musician's friends stole his body from an airport in 1973 and set it alight at Joshua Tree's Cap Rock?

Gram Parsons had asked to be cremated at Joshua Tree, so his road manager Phil Kaufman talked airport staff into handing over the coffin and drove it out to Cap Rock in a hearse.

U2 photographed the lone tree for The Joshua Tree far from the national park, close to which other desert park?

Death Valley. The band spotted the tree beside a highway near Darwin, far to the north of the park; it toppled around 2000, but fans still make the pilgrimage.

Which popular Joshua Tree summit hike is named for a rancher who took over the park's richest gold mine in the 1890s?

Ryan Mountain. The Ryans hauled a ten-stamp steam mill to their mine and cut so much timber to fire it that the nearby hills are still thinly wooded.

Which season brings Joshua Tree National Park its biggest crowds?

Spring. Mild days and desert wildflowers pull the crowds in, before summer afternoons that run above 100 °F.

Which small rodent of Joshua Tree can live its whole life without drinking, making water from the dry seeds it eats?

Kangaroo rat. Its kidneys wring so much water back out of its urine that the moisture it makes digesting dry seeds is enough to live on.

Which explorer, crossing the desert in 1844, called the Joshua tree the most repulsive in the vegetable kingdom?

John C. Frémont. Less than a century later the tree he found so ugly gave its name to a national monument.

Which mountains line the southwest edge of Joshua Tree National Park?

Little San Bernardino Mountains. They climb above 4,000 feet, high and cool enough to carry juniper and pinyon pine woodland in place of desert scrub.

A dense stand of which spiny plant forms Joshua Tree's famous cactus garden in the low eastern desert?

Teddy-bear cholla. The cuddly name is a joke: its fuzz is a solid coat of spines, and whole joints snap off and cling to anything that brushes past.

Joshua trees usually start to branch only after what event?

They bloom. Flowering needs a winter freeze and well-timed rain, so a tree that has never flowered can stand for years as a single bare stalk.

Why is it hard to tell the age of a Joshua tree?

Its trunk has no growth rings. Researchers estimate age from height instead, reckoning on growth of up to about three inches a year.

When cornered by a predator, what does a Joshua Tree tarantula do to defend itself?

Flicks barbed hairs. It rubs its back legs over its abdomen to brush them into an attacker's eyes, while its bite is no worse than a bee sting.

Which Joshua Tree animal is especially good at spreading fan palm seeds, eating the fruit and carrying the seeds long distances?

Coyote. Palm seeds that have passed through a coyote sprout more readily, so its wanderings help the palms reach new springs.

After the First World War, veterans came to Twentynine Palms hoping its dry desert air would heal what?

Gas-damaged lungs. A Pasadena doctor steered veterans of the gas attacks to the town for its clean, dry air, and their homesteads helped it grow.

Why was Joshua Tree National Monument shrunk by about a third in 1950?

To open land to more mining. Congress gave way to mining interests, and much of the lost ground stayed outside until the park was created in 1994.

Which 2018–19 event left Joshua Tree open with only eight rangers on duty?

Government shutdown. For 35 days most of the staff were sent home, and volunteers hauled trash and scrubbed toilets to keep the park going.

Which resident Joshua Tree bird, a hunter of lizards and scorpions, is a member of the cuckoo family?

Greater roadrunner. This ground cuckoo would rather sprint than fly, dashing forward to snatch prey in its bill.

Which effect of the high mountains to its west keeps Joshua Tree National Park so dry?

A rain shadow. Pacific storms drop their rain as they climb two peaks above 10,000 feet, and the air reaches the desert beyond with little moisture left.