Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. The US National Park Declaration in 1994 when the US Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act (Public Law 103-433), has been a US National Monument since 1936. Named for the original Joshua tree ( Yucca brevifolia ) from garden. It covers an area of ​​790,636 acres (1,235.37 sq., Mi; 3,199.59 km 2 ) - an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. Most of the parks, some 429,690 hectares (173,890 ha), are designated desert areas. Straddling the border between San Bernardino County and Riverside County, the park covers parts of two deserts, each of which is characterized primarily by altitude: the higher Mojave Desert and the lower Colorado Desert. Little San Bernardino Mountains flows through the southwestern edge of the park.
Video Joshua Tree National Park
History Edit
Start Edit
The earliest known inhabitants of the land in and around what later became Joshua Tree National Park were the people of the Pinto Culture, who lived and hunted here between 8000 and 4000 BC. Their stone tools and spears, discovered in the Pinto Basin in the 1930s, showed that they hunted games and gathered seasonal plants, but little was known about them. The inhabitants later included Serrano, Cahuilla, and the people of Chemehuevi. All three live in small villages in or near the water, especially the Oasis of Mara where non-aboriginal people are then called Twentynine Palms. They are hunter-gatherers who mostly live on plant foods supplied by small games, amphibians, and reptiles while using other plants to make drugs, bows and arrows, baskets, and other items of everyday life. The fourth group, Mojaves, uses local resources as they travel along the route between the Colorado River and the Pacific coast. In the 21st century, a small number of all four people live in the area near the park; The Twentynine Palms Band of Mission Indians, descendants of Chemehuevi, have a reservation at Twentynine Palms.
In 1772, a group of Spaniards led by Pedro Fages, made the first appearance of the Joshua tree in Japan while chasing converts to Christianity who escaped from a mission in San Diego. In 1823, the year Mexico reached independence from Spain, the Mexican expedition from Los Angeles, where it was then Alta California, was thought to have been explored as far east as the Elang Mountains in what was then a park. Three years later, Jedediah Smith led a group of American feathers and explorers along the nearby Mojave Line, and the others soon followed. Two decades after that, the United States defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American War (1846-48) and took over about half the original territory of Mexico, including California and the park in the future.
After 1870 Edit
In 1870, non-natives began to graze cattle on the tall grass that grew in the garden. In 1888, a group of livestock enthusiasts moved into the area near the Oasis of Mara. Led by the brothers James. B. and William S. McHaney, they hid cattle stolen in a canyon box at Cow Camp. Throughout the area, ranchers dug wells and built rainwater shelters called "tanks", such as White Tank and Barker Dam. In 1900, C. O. Barker, a miner and a rancher, built the original Barker Dam, later repaired by William "Bill" Keys, a rancher. Grazing continued in the park through 1945. Barker Dam was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1975.
Between the 1860s and 1940s, miners worked around 300 mines, mostly small, which later became parks. The most successful, the Missing Horse Mine, produces gold and silver worth about $ 5 million in current currency. Johnny Lang and others, the original owner of the Missing Horse Mine, installed a two-stamp factory to process ores on site, and the next owner, J.D. Ryan, replaced it with a 10-stamp steam-powered plant. Ryan pumps water from his farm to the mill and cuts wood from nearby hills to heat water to make steam. Most of the structures associated with the mine collapsed, and for security reasons, the National Park Service installed a mine, which had collapsed. The Desert Queen Mine on Keys' Desert Queen Ranch is another productive gold mine. In the early 1930s, Keys bought a petrol-powered two-stamp factory, Wall Street Mill, and transferred it to his ranch to process the ore. Livestock and factory were added to the NRHP in 1975 and mine in 1976. Some mines in the garden produce copper, zinc, and iron.
On August 10, 1936, after Minerva Hoyt and others persuaded state and federal governments to protect the area, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the power of the 1906 Antiquities Act to establish the Joshua Tree National Monument. It protects about 825,000 hectares (334,000 ha). In 1950, the size of the park decreased by about 290,000 hectares to open the land to more mining. The park was lifted into the National Park on October 31, 1994, by the Desert Protection Act, which also added 234,000 hectares to the park.
Maps Joshua Tree National Park
Geography and botany Edit
Mojave Desert Edit
The higher and cooler Mojave desert is the special habitat of Yucca brevifolia , the Joshua tree in which the park is named. This happens in patterns from dense forests to remote specimens. In addition to the Joshua tree forests, the western part of the park includes some of the most interesting geological features found in the California desert. The dominant geological features of this landscape are barren rocky hills, usually broken into large boulders. These hills are popular among rock climbers and fans are scrambling. The flat plains between these hills are rarely forested with Joshua trees. Together with the pile of rocks and the Stone Skulls, the trees make up the landscape of another world. The temperatures are most comfortable in spring and fall, with average highs/lows of 85 and 50 Â ° F (29 and 10 Â ° C) respectively. Winter brings a cooler day, around 60Ã, Â ° F (16Ã, Â ° C), and a cold night. Sometimes it snows at higher altitudes. Summer is hot, over 100 ° C (38 ° C) during the day and not much cooled below 75 ° F (24 ° C) until the early hours of the morning.
The Joshua tree dominates the open space of the park, but among the rocky outcrops is piÃÆ' Â ± on pine, juniper California ( Juniperus californica ), Quercus turbinella (desert scrub oak), > Quercus john-tuckeri (Tucker oak tree), and Quercus cornelius-mulleri (Muller oak tree). These communities are under pressure, as the climate is wetter until the 1930s, with the same hot and dry conditions that trigger the Dust Bowl to affect the local climate. These cycles are not new, but the original vegetation is unsuccessful when the wet cycle returns. The difference may be human development. Shepherding takes some natural cover and makes it less resistant to change. But the bigger problem seems to be invasive species, such as cheatgrass, which during the wet period fills down and between pine and oak trees. In dry periods, they die back, but not quickly decompose. This makes the forest fires hotter and more destructive, killing some of the supposedly surviving trees. As the area regenerates, the non-native grass forms a thick layer of grass that makes it harder for pine and oak seeds to gain a foothold.
Colorado Desert Edit
Below 3,000 feet (910 m), the Colorado Desert covers the eastern part of the park and has the habitat of the Shrubs Creosote, Ocotillo, Saltbush desert and shrubs including Yucca and Cholla cactus ( Cylindropuntia bigelovii ). There are areas with such a cactus density that appears as natural gardens. The lower Coachella valley is on the southeast side of the Park with sandy desert soils and desert dunes.
The only original California palm tree, California Fan Palm ( Washingtonia filifera ), appears naturally in five oases in the park, a rare area where water occurs naturally throughout the year and all forms of wildlife abound.
Geology Edit
The park's oldest rock, Pinto gneiss among them, is 1.7 billion years old. They are exposed in places on the surface of the park in the mountains of Cottonwood, Pinto, and Elang. Sometime later, from 250 to 75 million years ago, the tectonic plate movement forced the volcanic material to the surface at this location and formed granite, including a common monzogranite to the Wonderland of Rocks, part of the Pinto, Eagle, and Coxcomb mountains, and elsewhere. Erosion eventually exposes hard rock, gneiss and granite, on the plateau and reduces soft rocks into debris that fills the canyons and valleys between ranges. The debris, moving by gravity and water, forms an alluvial fan in the canyon's mouth as well as the bajadas where alluvial fans overlap.
Rock Formations Joshua Tree National Park owes its part part to the groundwater, which is filtered through monzonite rectangular joints and erodes the corners and edges of the stone block, and bypassing the flood, which drifts over the ground and leaves a pile of stone. This prominent outcrop is known as inselbergs.
Of the six blocks of mountains in the park, five - Little San Bernardino, Hexie, Pinto, Cottonwood, and Eagles - are among the Transverse Ranges, which generally trails east-west at the site between the Elang Mountains in the east and north. Channel Islands, in the Pacific Ocean west of Santa Barbara, to the west. Tectonic forces along the San Andreas Fault system push and lift the crust material that forms this range. The San Andreas fault itself passes southwest of the park, but associated parallel errors include Dillon, Blue Cut, and Pinto, walking through the park, and the movement along them has caused an earthquake. The easternmost range in the park, Coxcomb Mountains, generally runs north-south and is part of the Basin and Provincial Region.
Recreation Edit
Camping Edit
Nine campsites are set up in the park, two of which (Black Rock Campground and Cottonwood Campground) provide water and flush toilets. Charges are charged per night for each camping place. Reservations are accepted at Black Rock Campground, Cottonwood Campground, Indian Cove Campground, and Jumbo Rocks Campground for October to May, while other camps first come, first served. Backcountry camping, for those who want to backpacking, is allowed with some rules.
Hiking Edit
There are several climbing routes within the park, many of which are accessible from the campground. Shorter trails, such as a one-mile hike through Hidden Valley, offer the opportunity to see the beauty of the park without straying too far into the desert. Part of the California Riding and Hiking Trail meander for 35 miles (56 km) via the west side of the park. The surveillance point at Keys View, south of the park, offers views of the Coachella Valley, the Salton Sea, the San Andreas Fault, the Santa Rosa Mountains and the city of Palm Springs.
Nature trips within the park include:
- Hidden Valley
- Indian Cove
- Cholla Cactus Garden
Longer tracks include:
- Hiking Boy Scouts and Equestrian Trails
- Contact My Own
- Fortynine Palms Oasis
- Missing Horse Mine
- Lost Palms Oasis
- Ryan Mountain
- Top of Warren
Because of graffiti on at least 17 sites on the road, officials have closed them to the public. Closed places include Native American sites, at Rattlesnake Canyon Southern California park and Barker Dam. They blame the increasing vandalism on increasing the use of social media.
Ascending Edit
The park is popular with rock climbers and was originally a winter training ground alongside the Yosemite Valley and other parts of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada, but later became an interesting area in its own right. There are thousands of named climbing routes, in all difficulty levels. The route is usually short, the rocks rarely reach more than 230Ã, ft (70 m) tall, but access is usually only a short walk, past the desert, and allows to do some interesting climbs in one day. The rocks consist of quartz monzonite, a very rough type of granite that is made even harder because there is no snow or ice to polish it like in places like Yosemite.
Some routes are permanently closed while others are temporarily closed to protect sensitive wildlife in certain seasons. The permanently closed climbing and bouldering route includes Energy Crisis, Schwarzenegger Wall, Zombie Woof Rock, Maverick Boulder Formation, Pictograph Boulder, Shindig, Lonely Stones Area # 3, Shipwreck Formation, Indian Wave Boulders (except Original Arete), and Wormhole. On March 14, 2018, seasonal closures include Slatanic Area, Towers of Uncertainty, Patagonia Pile, and Jerry's Quarry.
Driving Edit
The paved main roads allow visitors to drive to the main attractions and through the park. Unpaved roads may require vehicles with high ground clearance, and four wheel drive. An example is the Geology Tour Road in the middle of the park. Visitors with four-wheeled vehicles can use this road for their own guided tour with stops depicting the geology of the region.
Birding Edit
There are over 250 species of birds in the park including the desert birds of the population such as larger street runners and cactus, as well as mockingbird, Le Conte thrasher, verdin and Gambel's quail. There are also many temporary species that may only spend one or two seasons in the park. Birding points recorded in the park include: fan palm oasis, Barker Dam and Smith Water Canyon. The Queen's Valley and the Missing Horse Valley also provide good birding but with a variety of species due to lack of water. This is often a good place to see woodpeckers supported by trajectory and oak titmouse. USGS Bird List The "what, when, and status" list has 239 species registered for the park.
Astronomy Edit
Joshua Tree is a popular southern California location for amateur and astronomical astronomy, along with the nearby Anza-Borrego Desert Country Park. Joshua Tree is famous for its dark skies, most of which are free of extreme light pollution in southern California. The height of the park and the dry desert air, along with the relatively stable atmosphere in southern California, often make excellent astronomical observation conditions. The darkness of Joshua Tree's sky ranges from green to blue (3-4) to the Dark-Sky Scale Bortle.
Wildlife Edit
Many animals make their homes in Joshua Tree. Birds, lizards, and ground squirrels are very likely to be seen because they are mostly active during the day. However, that night the desert animals went out to explore. Most nocturnal animals include snakes, bighorn sheep, kangaroo rats, coyotes, lynx, and black-tailed jackrabbits.
Animals that thrive in Joshua Tree often have special adaptations to deal with limited water and high summer temperatures. The smaller mammals and all the reptiles shelter from the heat below the ground. Desert mammals make use of their body's water supply more efficiently than the human body. Reptiles are physiologically adaptable to mix with a little water, and birds can fly to a water source when they need to drink. Nevertheless, springs and seeps in the garden are necessary for the survival of many animals.
Most reptiles and many small rodents and insects enter a state of inactive hibernation during the winter. However, winter is the largest concentration of birds in the park, due to the presence of many species of migrants.
A good place to see wildlife is at Barker Dam, a short climb from the parking area near Hidden Valley. Desert bighorn sheep and donkey occasionally stop by the dam for a drink. Barker Dam area tour is available.
Wildlife park includes:
- California tree frogs, Pseudacris cadaverina , are found in rocky permanent water sources created by Pinto Fault along the northern edge of the park.
- The frog marked red, Bufo punctatus , is a true dweller of the desert, where he spends most of his life underground. Found from one end of the park to the other, visible after a good heavy rain.
- The golden elephant hunts in the garden regularly.
- Roadrunner is a well known resident.
- The Gambel handler's call is often heard.
- Tarantula Aphonopelma iodine , Anax junius green tamer , and the massive desert scorpion Hadrurus arizonensis are arthropods that can grow to more than 4 inches (10 cm) long.
- The yucca mite Tegeticula paradoxa is responsible for pollinating the Joshua tree after the park is named.
Wilderness Edit
Of the total land area of ​​790,636 acres (319,959 ha) of parkland, 429,690 hectares (173,890 ha) are forests planted and managed by National Park Service (NPS) in accordance with the Wilderness Act. NPS requires registration for overnight camping at certain locations called registration boards. Other requirements include the use of campfires (because open fires are forbidden) and use camping techniques Without a Trace (also known as "pack it, pack it"). Although bicycles are not allowed in wilderness areas, horses are, but permits must be obtained first for journeys in the interior. Mobile signal is weak to none and should not rely on visiting the park.
Vandalism Edit
On April 1, 2015, graffiti artist AndrÃÆ' Â © was convicted and fined for damaging ancient rock formations in the park. AndrÃÆ' Â © posted a photo of vandalism on Instagram. The Modern Hiker website and its readers help the National Park Service in tracking and identifying AndrÃÆ'® vandalism. Prior to the conviction, AndrÃÆ' © © attempted to silence reporting with legal threat.
In popular culture Edit
In 1972, the cover of a photo album for Eagles was shot in Joshua Tree National Park.
In 1973, Phil Kaufman attempted to cremate the relic of singer/songwriter Gram Parsons here. To this day, people continue to visit in honor of Parsons.
In 1987, Irish rock band U2 released their fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree , named a tree with a photographed band near Darwin, California. It is a common misconception that this tree site is inside Joshua Tree National Park, when in fact it is more than 200 miles away.
In 1994, American singer Tejano Selena recorded her music video for "Amor Prohibido" at Joshua Tree National Park.
In 2016, Donald Glover (a.k.a Childish Gambino) performed six sold-out shows at Joshua Tree in promoting his new album, "Awaken, My Love!". The three day event went by the name of Pharos.
In 2017, American rock band Walk the Moon recorded the video "One Foot" in the park during the summer solar eclipse.
See also Edit
- Cahuilla
- California Desert Defense Act of 1994
- Chemehuevi
- Johnny Lang
- Mojave and Colorado Save the Biosphere Reservation
- List of Historic Historic Places in Joshua Tree National Park
References Edit
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents from the National Park Service.
Works cited Edit
- Dilsaver, Lary M. (March 2015). Joshua Tree National Park: The History of Preserving the Desert (PDF) . National Park Service. OCLCÃ, 912308073 . Retrieved July 4, 2017 .
- Eggers, Margaret (2004). Mining and Geological History of Joshua Tree National Park . San Diego Association of Geologists. ISBN: 978-0-916251-70-3. Kulter, James (2010). Joshua Tree: Full Guide (4th ed.). Press Goal. ISBN: 978-0-9825172-3-9.
- Zarki, Joseph W. (2015). American Image: Joshua Tree National Park . Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN: 978-1-4671-3281-7. Ã,
Further reading Edit
- Bird , Joshua Tree National Parks Association
- "Joshua Tree" (2001), Gold of California . VHS videorecording by Huell Howser Productions, in collaboration with KCET/Los Angeles. OCLCÃ, 655384402
External links Edit
- Official website by National Park Service
- Map of Joshua Tree National Park
- Geology Travel Guide: article by the American Geological Institute
- "Livestock Key: Where Time Still Stood" , Teaching National Parks Service with Historic Sites (TwHP) lesson plans
- List of Joshua Tree National Birds with seasonal info.
- "Classical Motorcycle" article Motorcycles through Joshua Tree National Park
- US. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Hidden Valley
- Geographical data related to Joshua Tree National Park in OpenStreetMap
Source of the article : Wikipedia