From early January through June, Joshua Tree National Park is covered in wildflowers: poppies, desert dandelions, blue desert bluebells, Brittlebush, Parish‘s daisy. It is a flourishing habitat for over 750 plant species.

While it’s known for its diverse landscape, a perfect haven for birdwatchers, photographers, hikers, and rock climbers, the park‘s history is a compelling story of environmentalism and the impact of humans on the natural world.

As you walk across the garden, you’re also walking at the historic site of the Pinto Culture. 10,000 years ago, a group of hunters thrived off the Pleistocene lakes located there. As the climate became increasingly hostile, the people adapted to their environment.

Eventually, they developed into the Serrano, Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, and Mohave tribes, who lived near hot springs and survived by hunting and gathering. In 1853, the federal government declared native lands to be part of the public domain, forcing indigenous tribes off of their ancestral lands and assigning them to small military-run reservations.

Walking throughout the park, visitors can also find the remains of up to 300 abandoned gold mines from the gold rush. In the 1870s, various mining and cattle-ranching ventures moved into the area, further displacing native tribes and disrupting desert wildlife.

As desert flora became more popular among city dwellers, the desert became more barren, as landscapers dug up yuccas, prickly pears, and chollas for private and commercial use. Near Joshua Tree, just north of Interstate 10, you can see the slowly recovering Devil‘s Garden, once a lush desert plant ecosystem. Minerva Hoyt, founder of the International Desert Conservation League, remarked that “A month ago, I visited the same spot again”. “Imagine the surprise and the shock of finding a barren acreage with scarcely a Joshua tree left standing and the whole face of the landscape a desolate waste, denuded of its growth for commercialism.”

After years of activism and sending photo albums of the desert to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, over 825,000 acres of land were designated as a national monument in 1936 and redesignated as Joshua Tree National Park in 1994, ensuring that the desert’s flora and fauna would remain federally protected.

This past winter, I was finally able to venture into Joshua Tree National Park and hike across its glorious expanses of golden desert, stopping every few minutes to point out a distinctive rock formation (skulls, hearts, faces) and fully appreciate the efforts of activists like Hoyt, who have fought arduously to keep our nature spaces protected.

<Ellie Byun 학생기자 산티아고 고교 12학년>