Joshua Tree National Park: Hiking an Other-Worldly Desert Landscape

“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.”

~Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince

Endless rows of twisted, bristly-branched Joshua trees and ruggedly-shaped rock formations line the main road that winds about 30 miles through Joshua Tree National Park. It’s a surreal scene, a vast and desolate landscape that appears both fascinating and unforgiving. Trees reach out in every direction – some looking as if they could topple to the ground – and piles of boulders seem so precariously perched on top of one another that surely someone must have placed them there.

Spread out over almost 800,000 acres, Joshua Tree National Park is compared in size to the state of Rhode Island. Two deserts – the northern Mojave, or high desert, and the southern Colorado, or low desert – make their home here. Established as a National Monument in 1906 and redesignated as a National Park in 1994, Joshua Tree encompasses three hundred miles of hiking trails and 8,000 rock climbing routes.

It takes about an hour to reach Joshua Tree from Palm Springs. Herb and I left our hotel at 7 a.m. and stopped at the Visitor Center on Park Boulevard before arriving at the West Entrance Station. A wonderfully friendly ranger checked our National Park passes and welcomed us. Once inside the park, we drove eleven miles to our first trail.

Planning Our Visit

Before leaving home, I’d mapped out the trails and rock formations we’d hoped to explore. The park’s main roads – Park Boulevard and Pinto Basin – stretch between the West, North and South Entrance Stations and enable travel between desired sites without backtracking as long as you visit them based on their locations. The National Park Service website offers descriptions of the trails and rock formations, including location, parking lots, trail lengths and elevations, and estimated time to complete the hike.

Joshua Tree is one of those places where planning ahead is critical. Here are a few tips that helped make our visit as seamless as possible:

• There is no food in the park, and water filling stations are limited. Bring extra water and anything you might want for a snack or lunch.
• Restroom facilities are found only at the Visitor Centers, with “vault toilets” available at some of the trailheads. It’s a good idea to carry your own toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
• GPS can be spotty-to-nonexistent. Download and print a paper map or pick one up at one of the Visitor Centers. We also downloaded the National Park Service app, which did have GPS and worked well throughout the park, even on the trails.
• Make sure your car isn’t running on empty. This is not a place where you’d want to be stranded by the side of the road!
• Wear a hat and slather on the sunscreen in this land of blazing sun, very little shade and temperatures that rise throughout the day. Bring a sweatshirt or wear layers to be comfortable in the chilly early morning and evening temperatures. We started our first hike around 8:15 a.m. when the temperature was in the 70°s and met a hiker who said it was 45°F when he had arrived a short time earlier.

Barker Dam Trail

The early morning air was cool and comfortable when we arrived at Barker Dam Trail, our first hike of the day. Planning an early start turned out to offer the bonus of not too many hikers, allowing us to take in the Mojave Desert vegetation and monzogranite boulders found along the estimated one-hour walk. The trail leads to a historic dam built in the early 1900s by cattle ranchers who were looking to harness water for their livestock. Their creation began as a catch basin for rainfall and runoff water and was later expanded into a dam by the Barker & Shay Cattle Company. But by mid-century, rainfall in the area dramatically declined, and the dam was closed. Today Barker Dam serves as a watering hole for desert animals and migrating birds… but only when it rains.

Hidden Valley Nature Trail

The crowds that we missed at Barker Dam must have been having a party at Hidden Valley Trail. It was only 10 a.m., but the parking lot was nearly full, and the trail was packed. Hidden Valley is known as a popular trial that can be hiked in as little as half-an-hour, although it felt like it took us quite a bit longer. It’s also a place frequented by rock climbers, and as soon as the trail spills out into the first wide-open boulder-bedecked space, it’s easy to see why.

Cap Rock Trail

This easy, half-mile trail turned out to be surprisingly beautiful and a personal favorite. The trail winds along Joshua tree woodlands and stunning monzogranite rock formations and is a habitat for a variety of desert plants that are identified by descriptive signage.

Split Rock and Skull Rock

Joshua Tree is home to a host of rock formations known by their distinctive shapes and features. We managed to track down two of these famous rock stars before it was time to leave for a late lunch and visit to Pioneertown.

Pioneertown

Although it’s only a twenty-minute drive from Joshua Tree, the former Western film set called Pioneertown feels like a world away from a national park. Constructed in 1946 in an unincorporated community by a group of Hollywood film stars, the 1880s-themed Pioneertown served as a place where production companies could live while working on Western films and TV shows. Actor Roy Rogers, known as the “King of Cowboys,” was an early developer and investor, and “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry filmed his weekly show in town for five years.

It’s unclear how many Western films and TV shows were produced in Pioneertown. The town’s website estimates that more than 200 productions were made, mostly in the 1940s and ’50s before the Western genre declined in popularity. When the final production crews walked off into the sunset, the buildings along Mane Street (yes, that’s how it’s spelled!) remained, continuing on as a tourist attraction. Today Pioneertown – population 600 – remains a fully functioning movie set, where independent films, music videos and commercials are made.

Pappy & Harriet’s

The most popular spot in town is clearly Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, part restaurant, part music venue, and cantina featured in Western films. According to the venue’s website, original owners Harriet and her husband Claude “Pappy” Allen established the Pioneertown Palace in 1982 as their dream of “blending live music, homestyle cooking, and an unpretentious, welcoming atmosphere.”

Herb and I arrived around 1:30, and the lunch crowd was still streaming in. It’s a lively place, with friendly service and tasty food. Concert memorabilia decorates nearly every inch of every wall. Paul McCartney famously played a “surprise gig” here in 2016. And from the framed photo that hangs near the entrance, it looks like he was having as much fun as the lucky patrons who happened to be there for his surprise performance.