Qualla: Rocky Mountains & Great Plains

Cabazon Dinosaurs

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jllm06, CC0. Two enormous concrete dinosaurs loom over Interstate 10 in the California desert, the eleven-year obsession of a sculptor who wanted drivers to remember his diner.

Read more: Cabazon Dinosaurs on Qualla

Image: Jllm06 | CC0

Bent's Fort

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Billy Hathorn, CC BY-SA 3.0. An adobe fortress on the Arkansas River where William Bent married into the Cheyenne nation, brokered peace between rival Plains powers, and ran the largest trading enterprise west of Missouri - until smallpox, war, and the buffalo's decline ended a sixteen-year experiment in plains diplomacy.

Read more: Bent's Fort on Qualla

Image: Billy Hathorn | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The adobe fort you walk through today was raised from prairie dust in 1976 - 160,000 hand-made bricks, 800 cottonwood logs, three years of digging, and one young Army officer's 1845 sketches that turned out to be measured drawings.

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The small Wyoming town where two teenage taxidermist brothers invented America's favorite imaginary animal in 1932 - and then leaned all the way in, with an eight-foot statue, official hunting licenses, and zero embarrassment.

The Devil's Rope Museum

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Venturist from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. In a former brassiere factory on old Route 66 in McLean, Texas, a small museum holds the artifact that closed the American West: 500-plus varieties of barbed wire, each one a small chapter in how a single 1874 patent ended the open range.

Read more: The Devil's Rope Museum on Qualla

Image: Venturist from London, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

World's Largest Ball of Twine

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A twenty-thousand-pound sphere of sisal sitting in a gazebo on the main street of Cawker City, Kansas - started by one farmer in 1953, kept growing by his whole town for half a century after he died.

Inaja Band of Diegueno Mission Indians

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Inaja and Cosmit Reservation near Julian, California, holds land claimed by the Kumeyaay Nation in the San Diego backcountry — land that census records show as unpopulated even as the tribe maintains its sovereign presence.

Westmorland, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Mayer (mav), CC BY-SA 3.0. One of Imperial County's smallest cities, with a police department of six officers and a community shaped by desert agriculture and the earthquakes that periodically shake the valley floor.

Read more: Westmorland, California on Qualla

Image: Daniel Mayer (mav) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edward S. Curtis, Public domain. A federally recognized Kumeyaay tribe whose 15,000-acre homeland in the mountains east of Julian sustains seven species of oak and a tradition of governance stretching back long before California statehood.

Image: Edward S. Curtis | Public domain

Julian, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Microsomen 17:11, 31 May 2005 (UTC), CC BY 2.0. A gold rush mountain town east of San Diego where Black pioneers were among the earliest and most prominent settlers, the apples still come in October, and the Milky Way is visible on clear nights.

Read more: Julian, California on Qualla

Image: --Microsomen 17:11, 31 May 2005 (UTC) | CC BY 2.0

Julian Gold Rush Hotel

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Built in 1897 by formerly enslaved Albert and Margaret Robinson, the Julian Gold Rush Hotel is the oldest continually operating hotel in Southern California and one of the first Black-owned businesses in San Diego County.

Read more: Julian Gold Rush Hotel on Qualla

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Rancho Santa Ysabel (Ortega)

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 17,719-acre Mexican land grant in the mountains east of San Diego, granted in 1844 to a California-Mexican ranching family and an English sailor who survived one of the most famous battles in early American California.

Rancho Valle de San Felipe

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit we6jbo, CC BY-SA 3.0. A nearly 10,000-acre Mexican land grant that became the operational headquarters for 12 Butterfield Overland Mail stage stations and later a Union Army outpost during the Civil War.

Image: we6jbo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Santa Ysabel Asistencia

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tristan Loper, CC BY-SA 4.0. Founded in 1818 as a satellite of Mission San Diego, Santa Ysabel Asistencia housed 450 native neophytes, camped General Kearny before his ill-fated battle, and lost its bells to thieves who stole them in the summer of 1926.

Read more: Santa Ysabel Asistencia on Qualla

Image: Tristan Loper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hot Springs Mountain

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The highest point in San Diego County at 6,533 feet, owned by the Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians, with views stretching to Catalina Island and the Topatopa Mountains 150 miles away.

Read more: Hot Springs Mountain on Qualla

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rancho San José del Valle

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Warner's Ranch — a 26,689-acre Mexican land grant where a Connecticut-born Yankee turned Californio, the Cupeño people were forcibly evicted by Supreme Court order, and a modern reservoir now covers the western fields.

Rancho Valle de San José (Portilla)

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 17,634-acre Mexican land grant issued in 1836, whose history ran parallel to the neighboring Warner's Ranch through indigenous eviction, changing ownership, and eventual submersion under Lake Henshaw.

Borrego Sink

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wasquewhat, CC BY-SA 4.0. The lowest point of the Borrego Valley at 455 feet, where Juan Bautista de Anza's 1775 expedition dug wells for 140 horses, and where Coyote Creek — the valley's only perennial stream — finally comes to rest.

Read more: Borrego Sink on Qualla

Image: Wasquewhat | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borrego Valley Groundwater Basin

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

One of California's driest groundwater basins, where 65 years of agricultural pumping dropped water levels two feet per year and where the state now requires reducing annual consumption from 19,100 to 5,700 acre-feet.

Ocotillo Wells, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tuxyso, CC BY-SA 3.0. A desert community that has hosted Juan Bautista de Anza's colonial expedition, an F-35B crash, and a classic science fiction film, and that serves as the gateway to one of California's largest off-highway vehicle parks.

Image: Tuxyso | CC BY-SA 3.0

Borrego Valley Maneuver Area

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 255,840-acre World War II desert training ground where the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps practiced bombing, rocketry, and night driving on land that was returned to California after the war ended in 1944.

Thomas L. "Pegleg" Smith

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arty323108, CC BY-SA 3.0. A mountain man who reportedly amputated his own leg, ran the largest horse theft ring in the Southwest, and spent his later years selling maps to a gold mine that may or may not have ever existed.

Read more: Thomas L. "Pegleg" Smith on Qualla

Image: Arty323108 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anza, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trios2007, Public domain. A Riverside County valley community at 3,921 feet where the Cahuilla have lived for over 2,000 years, where Red Skelton kept horses, and where the Pacific Crest Trail passes through a valley renamed from Cahuilla to Anza in 1926.

Read more: Anza, California on Qualla

Image: Trios2007 | Public domain

Cahuilla Band of Indians

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A federally recognized Cahuilla tribe who relocated to the Anza Valley in 1875, whose 18,884-acre reservation includes a casino opened in 1996, and whose origin story begins with brothers Mukat and Tamaoit shaping the world.

Read more: Cahuilla Band of Indians on Qualla

San Bernardino National Forest

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scottthezombie (talk) (Transferred by JaumeBG/Originally uploaded by Scottthezombie), CC BY-SA 3.0. Spanning 823,816 acres of Southern California's highest peaks and deepest canyons, San Bernardino National Forest shelters old-growth giants, a bald eagle couple livestreamed by millions, and the San Andreas Fault running beneath one of its lakes.

Image: Scottthezombie (talk) (Transferred by JaumeBG/Originally uploaded by Scottthezombie) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Santa Rosa Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Rising from the floor of the Coachella Valley to a summit above 8,700 feet in less than twenty miles, the Santa Rosa Mountains were among the last ranges in the Southwest to receive a permanent Spanish name — and the first in the region to receive federal protection for their endangered bighorn sheep.

Read more: Santa Rosa Mountains on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Toro Peak

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tylerfinvold at English Wikipedia, Public domain. At 8,717 feet, Toro Peak is the highest point of the Santa Rosa Mountains — a sky island where limber pines cling to survival as ice-age relics, and on a clear day the eye can reach the mountains of Nevada.

Read more: Toro Peak on Qualla

Image: Tylerfinvold at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Camp Joe Scherman

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Geographer at English Wikipedia., CC BY 1.0. Perched at 5,500 feet in the San Jacinto Mountains on land that was Cahuilla homeland for millennia, Camp Joe Scherman was named for California's first state park ranger and woven through with Cahuilla language in the names of its units.

Read more: Camp Joe Scherman on Qualla

Image: The original uploader was Geographer at English Wikipedia. | CC BY 1.0

Idyllwild–Pine Cove

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 3.0. A mile-high mountain village flanked by two famous rock formations, Idyllwild began as the summer refuge of Cahuilla people escaping desert heat and became, over a century, a refuge for climbers, artists, writers, and anyone else who needed a mountain to think by.

Read more: Idyllwild–Pine Cove on Qualla

Image: CC BY 3.0

Philip L. Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hidden in the Santa Rosa Mountains, Deep Canyon drops 1,500 meters in 13 kilometers — from pine forest to Sonoran desert floor — and the research station at its base has discovered new species of wasps, monitored nuclear tests, and hosted scientists since 1908.

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rancho Mirage Library and Observatory

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In a valley better known for golf courses and celebrity retreats, the Rancho Mirage Library and Observatory has become something unlikely: a place where desert residents borrow telescopes to stare at the stars, and writers from Doris Kearns Goodwin to Tom Hanks come to talk about books.

Duroville

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On tribal land near Mecca, California, a community of roughly 4,000 residents — most of them farmworkers from Michoacán — built their lives in a mobile home park that the government spent years trying to close, and a federal judge ruled that forcing them out would constitute one of the largest forced migrations in California history.

Read more: Duroville on Qualla

Eastern Coachella Valley

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

East of the resort cities and golf courses, the Coachella Valley's four unincorporated communities produce most of the valley's agricultural wealth — and face extreme heat, limited services, and a decades-long struggle for civic recognition.

Read more: Eastern Coachella Valley on Qualla

Martinez Canyon Rockhouse

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A two-room stone cabin built in the 1930s in the Santa Rosa Mountains Wilderness, accessible only by a twenty-mile hike after the original road washed away in 1976, where visitors still leave their names on a paper sheet inside.

Mecca, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Z3lvs, CC0. At 150 feet below sea level in the eastern Coachella Valley, Mecca has recorded two of the highest temperatures in California history — and its residents, mostly farmworkers growing the date palms that define the region, have lived with that heat for generations.

Read more: Mecca, California on Qualla

Image: Z3lvs | CC0

Santa Rosa Wilderness

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Carved from the Coachella Valley's southwestern wall by two major fault systems, the 72,259-acre Santa Rosa Wilderness shelters one of the last viable populations of Peninsular Range bighorn sheep along trails that have served as pathways through these mountains for thousands of years.

Read more: Santa Rosa Wilderness on Qualla

Tahquitz Canyon

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OvertAnalyzer, CC BY-SA 4.0. Inhabited by the Cahuilla people for more than 5,000 years, Tahquitz Canyon holds a waterfall that appeared in a Frank Capra film and a spirit — the shaman Tahquitz — who has been stealing souls and causing earthquakes in Cahuilla belief since the beginning of time.

Read more: Tahquitz Canyon on Qualla

Image: OvertAnalyzer | CC BY-SA 4.0

Whitewater River

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Whitewater River begins near the summit of San Gorgonio Mountain and drops through one of Southern California's most dramatic canyon systems, carrying water that appears milky white from dissolved minerals — a color that earned it its original Spanish name, Agua Blanco.

Read more: Whitewater River on Qualla

Image: Dicklyon | CC BY-SA 4.0

1959 Ryder Cup

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The thirteenth Ryder Cup, played at Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells in November 1959, ended with a British team that had crossed the Atlantic and endured a turbulent flight before switching to a bus — arriving ill — to lose once again to the United States.

Read more: 1959 Ryder Cup on Qualla

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chalino Sánchez

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Chalino Sánchez survived being shot in Coachella in January 1992, sold his music rights, gave away his guns, and kept singing corridos — until May 16, 1992, when someone passed him a note at a show in Culiacán, and he walked out into the night and was never seen alive again.

Read more: Chalino Sánchez on Qualla

Coachella Valley Water District

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Founded in 1918 to claim the region's rights to the Whitewater River, the Coachella Valley Water District now manages a desert system serving 320,000 people from an aquifer holding 39.2 million acre-feet of water — and the gravity-fed canal that brings Colorado River water across a hundred miles of desert.

Coachella Valley

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DylanMoz49, CC BY-SA 4.0. An arid rift valley between the San Jacinto and San Bernardino mountains, the Coachella Valley is simultaneously the heart of American date production, the home of the world's most-attended tennis tournament outside the Grand Slams, the site of the most powerful music festival in the country, and one of the hottest inhabited places in North America.

Read more: Coachella Valley on Qualla

Image: DylanMoz49 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Empire Polo Club

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0. A thousand-acre polo facility in Indio that in 1993 began leasing its grounds to a music promoter named Goldenvoice — launching what became the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and, eventually, a 28-year deal that closed the polo fields permanently.

Read more: Empire Polo Club on Qualla

Image: Raph_PH | CC BY 2.0

Indian Wells Open

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.5. The BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells has grown into the best-attended tennis tournament outside the four Grand Slams — but it took Venus and Serena Williams fourteen years to return after racial slurs drove them away in 2001.

Read more: Indian Wells Open on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 2.5

Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Built in 1942 to train pilots for Operation Torch — the Allied invasion of North Africa — the airport at Thermal sits 115 feet below sea level in a valley where summer heat can reach 120°F, so flight operations begin at 3am and end at 1pm.

La Quinta Resort & Club

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0. Opened on December 29, 1926, in Spanish Colonial Revival casitas designed by Gordon Kaufmann, La Quinta Resort became Frank Capra's favorite place to write screenplays — and a century later is still hosting guests, a Bachelorette season, and a wedding-dress scene from Olivia Wilde's Don't Worry Darling.

Read more: La Quinta Resort & Club on Qualla

Image: Coolcaesar | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shields Date Gardens

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0. Since 1924, Shields Date Gardens in Indio has been presenting 'The Romance and Sex Life of the Date' in a small on-site theater — a film created around 1950, updated in 2007, still running — while selling date varieties that Floyd Shields bred himself and that remain exclusive to Shields to this day.

Read more: Shields Date Gardens on Qualla

Image: Visitor7 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Commissioned in 1942 as an auxiliary to NAS San Diego, the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea trained pilots through World War II, served space program parachute testing until 1979, and was then slowly consumed by the rising waters of the Salton Sea, which now covers much of its runway.

Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pacific Southwest Region USFWS from Sacramento, US, Public domain. Nearly 38,000 acres of protected wetlands at the south end of the Salton Sea anchor one of California's most critical stops on the Pacific Flyway.

Image: Pacific Southwest Region USFWS from Sacramento, US | Public domain

Salton Sea Beach, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tuxyso, CC BY-SA 3.0. A small community on the western shore of the Salton Sea where the ruins of mid-century ambition slowly sink into salt-encrusted ground.

Image: Tuxyso | CC BY-SA 3.0

Salton Sink

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lowest trough in the western United States, where tectonic forces are slowly pulling California apart and ancient lakes have come and gone for tens of thousands of years.

Read more: Salton Sink on Qualla

Calipatria, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Polk, CC BY-SA 2.5. A small Imperial Valley city that holds the distinction of being the lowest incorporated city in the Western Hemisphere, sitting 180 feet below sea level in the shadow of two state prisons.

Read more: Calipatria, California on Qualla

Image: Eric Polk | CC BY-SA 2.5

Calipatria State Prison

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The lowest prison in the Western Hemisphere, where an unlikely birdwatcher redesigned the fence to stop electrocuting birds and where two of California's most notorious serial killers spent their final years.

Read more: Calipatria State Prison on Qualla

Imperial Valley Geothermal Project

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Level 1 and Atmospheres Active Distribution System (LAADS), cropped by User:HLHJ, Public domain. Eleven geothermal power stations tapping superheated brine beneath the Imperial Valley make this the second largest geothermal field in the United States — and the potential source of enough lithium to transform America's electric vehicle supply chain.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Level 1 and Atmospheres Active Distribution System (LAADS), cropped by User:HLHJ | Public domain

Imperial Valley

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A sunken desert that California transformed into one of America's most productive agricultural regions, where billion-dollar harvests grow 235 feet below sea level and the Blue Angels practice their formations in winter skies.

Read more: Imperial Valley on Qualla

Lithium Valley

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Salton Sea's geothermal brine contains five times more lithium than the Dead Sea, and the race is on to extract it before the batteries that power the clean energy transition run short of the metal they need most.

Read more: Lithium Valley on Qualla

Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PHC Dave Tate, U.S. Navy, Public domain. Nearly half a million acres of Sonoran Desert are set aside as a Marine Corps bombing range, where aircraft have trained for combat over some of California's most remote terrain for more than eighty years.

Image: PHC Dave Tate, U.S. Navy | Public domain

Niland, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A small community near the Salton Sea whose proximity to Slab City, Salvation Mountain, and a wandering mud geyser has made it an unlikely landmark in California's off-grid geography.

Read more: Niland, California on Qualla

Niland Geyser

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rschen7754, CC BY-SA 4.0. A bubbling mudpot near the Salton Sea is the only formation of its kind known to walk — migrating across the desert floor at up to ten feet per month while threatening highways, pipelines, and the patience of engineers.

Read more: Niland Geyser on Qualla

Image: Rschen7754 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Salvation Mountain

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Entreprogreur, CC BY-SA 4.0. Leonard Knight spent nearly three decades building a fifty-foot mountain of adobe, tires, and thousands of gallons of paint in the California desert, driven by nothing more than a desire to tell the world that God is love.

Read more: Salvation Mountain on Qualla

Image: Entreprogreur | CC BY-SA 4.0

Dos Palmas Spring

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An artesian spring at the foot of the Orocopia Mountains that sustained Native Americans, Gold Rush travelers, and the man who gave Ehrenberg, Arizona its name — until a murder ended one chapter of its history.

Read more: Dos Palmas Spring on Qualla

North Shore Beach and Yacht Club

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. Albert Frey designed it, Frank Sinatra visited it, and Linkin Park photographed its ruin — the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club traced the Salton Sea's entire arc from glamour to catastrophe in a single building.

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

North Shore, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. A small community on the Salton Sea's northeastern shore where two centuries of California history converge — from Spanish expeditions to WWII training grounds to a 100-megawatt solar farm.

Read more: North Shore, California on Qualla

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

General George S. Patton Memorial Museum

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 48states (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. At a desert crossroads 30 miles east of Indio, a museum marks the headquarters of the largest military training ground in history — where over a million American soldiers learned to fight in the desert before shipping out to North Africa.

Image: 48states (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murders of Jan Pietrzak and Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 2008 murders of a Marine sergeant and his wife by four fellow Marines — two of them serving under his command — resulted in one of the most severe criminal sentences in California military history.

Chocolate Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixty miles of dark volcanic ridges between the Salton Sea and the Colorado River, sheltering desert bighorn sheep, feral horses, and rocks old enough to remember when this part of North America was forming.

Read more: Chocolate Mountains on Qualla

Image: Visitor7 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Camp Desert Center

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Built in weeks in 1942 and closed by 1944, this desert supply depot and hospital sent its 92nd Evacuation Hospital unit on a journey through New Guinea, Leyte, Luzon, and occupied Japan — a medical unit forged in the California heat.

Read more: Camp Desert Center on Qualla

Chuckwalla Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dorausch from Venice, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. A forty-mile desert range where a Spanish friar reached a desert spring in 1776, a naturalist discovered a hibernating bird in 1946, and the chuckwalla lizard still basks on ancient rocks near the San Andreas Fault.

Read more: Chuckwalla Mountains on Qualla

Image: Michael Dorausch from Venice, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Desert Center Airport

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. An airfield built in 1943 to support Patton's desert training has evolved through bomber training, emergency landing designation, and private acquisition to become home to the Chuckwalla Valley Raceway.

Read more: Desert Center Airport on Qualla

Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

Desert Center, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Epolk, CC0. A tiny desert crossroads where Kaiser Permanente was born, three major films were shot, and a prepaid healthcare revolution began in the loneliest stretch of Southern California.

Image: Epolk | CC0

Sidney Garfield

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dr. Sidney Garfield opened a six-bed hospital in the California desert in 1933, invented prepaid group medicine to keep it solvent, and thereby created Kaiser Permanente — the country's largest nonprofit health maintenance organization.

Read more: Sidney Garfield on Qualla

Elrod House

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

John Lautner's 1968 masterpiece of desert modernism, where a circular concrete canopy shelters rooms that integrate the natural boulders of Southridge Drive — and where James Bond once fought for his life.

Read more: Elrod House on Qualla

Forever Marilyn

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Seward Johnson's 26-foot, 34,000-pound stainless steel sculpture of Marilyn Monroe — the skirt-blowing moment from *The Seven Year Itch* rendered at monumental scale — has traveled from Chicago to Palm Springs to New Jersey to Australia, becoming as nomadic as Monroe herself was restless.

Read more: Forever Marilyn on Qualla

Historic Tennis Club

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BL Snow, CC BY-SA 3.0. Palm Springs' oldest neighborhood began with a father's desperate gamble — bringing his tubercular son to the desert for clean air in 1884 — and grew into a district where Albert Einstein once rested, and where the city's oldest surviving hotel still operates.

Read more: Historic Tennis Club on Qualla

Image: BL Snow | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hope Residence

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bob Hope's 23,600-square-foot Palm Springs home, designed by John Lautner, is famous for its conical fireplace chimney, a swimming pool shaped like Hope's profile, and its owner's deadpan assessment upon seeing the architectural model: 'Well, at least when they come down from Mars they'll know where to go.'

Read more: Hope Residence on Qualla

Kaufmann Desert House

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pmeulbroek, CC BY-SA 4.0. Richard Neutra's 1946 house for the man who also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater helped define modernist architecture in the American West — and nearly a century later it served as a film location for *Don't Worry Darling*.

Read more: Kaufmann Desert House on Qualla

Image: Pmeulbroek | CC BY-SA 4.0

Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit YuriVict, Public domain. A one-acre family-owned desert garden founded in 1939 by Patricia and Chester 'Cactus Slim' Moorten — one of the original Keystone Cops — who planted 3,000 desert plants from eight global regions and never stopped adding to them.

Image: YuriVict | Public domain

Movie Colony East

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BadNewsBear, CC BY-SA 4.0. Renamed from 'Ruth Hardy Park' to 'Movie Colony East' by a neighborhood vote in May 2012, this Palm Springs district is defined by Frank Sinatra's Twin Palms estate — a 1947 E. Stewart Williams design where the Chairman of the Board lived the first chapter of his Palm Springs life.

Read more: Movie Colony East on Qualla

Image: BadNewsBear | CC BY-SA 4.0

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The world's largest rotating aerial tramway climbs from the Sonoran Desert floor to the alpine wilderness of Mount San Jacinto in ten minutes, rising nearly six thousand feet through five distinct life zones — a journey that Francis Crocker dreamed up in 1935 and everyone else called impossible.

Palm Springs Air Museum

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PSAM1996, CC BY-SA 4.0. A nonprofit aviation museum where Walt Disney's personal Grumman Gulfstream, a Douglas Dauntless dive bomber recovered from the bottom of Lake Michigan, and a P-51 that flew in a 1957 film are among the WWII-era aircraft preserved in the desert air.

Read more: Palm Springs Air Museum on Qualla

Image: PSAM1996 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Palm Springs Art Museum

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. Founded in 1938 to document the Colorado Desert and the Cahuilla people who called it home, the Palm Springs Art Museum has grown into a 75,000-square-foot institution with 24,000 objects — and its E. Stewart Williams-designed building is itself listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Read more: Palm Springs Art Museum on Qualla

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Palm Springs, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sidvics, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cahuilla people called it Séc-he; the celebrities called it their desert retreat; in January 2018 it became the first city in America with an entirely LGBTQ-comprised city government — and through all of it, the San Jacinto Mountains kept watch from the west.

Read more: Palm Springs, California on Qualla

Image: Sidvics | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palm Springs International Airport

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sdkb, CC BY-SA 4.0. Built on Agua Caliente land as a WWII Army Air Corps emergency strip, the airport that would one day honor Sonny Bono carried the body of President Gerald Ford on its first leg to Washington — and today handles over three million passengers a year.

Image: Sdkb | CC BY-SA 4.0

Palm Springs International Film Festival

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mayor Sonny Bono launched the festival in 1989 to give a small desert city an outsized cultural voice — and it grew into the largest world cinema festival in the United States, drawing 135,000 people and 134 films from 64 countries at its 34th edition.

Palm Springs Stadium

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0. A former polo ground turned spring training home for the California Angels under Gene Autry, the stadium that opened in 1949 has hosted the Chicago White Sox, a pioneering LGBT semi-pro baseball league, and the California Winter League — spring training in winter, because the desert makes it possible.

Read more: Palm Springs Stadium on Qualla

Image: Visitor7 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palm Springs Walk of the Stars

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0. Established in 1992 with nearly 480 stars across seven categories — from Entertainment to Military to Architect/Artist/Designer — Palm Springs' version of Hollywood's famous Walk covers the boulevard where celebrities once strolled without being noticed because everyone around them was also famous.

Image: Visitor7 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Plaza Theatre (Palm Springs, California)

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toohool, CC0. Opened December 12, 1936 with the premiere of Greta Garbo's *Camille*, the Plaza Theatre hosted the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies for twenty-four seasons before closing — and a $5 million donation from a *Frasier* producer launched its restoration.

Image: Toohool | CC0

Racquet Club of Palm Springs

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Founded by actors Charles Farrell and Ralph Bellamy and opened December 15, 1934, the Racquet Club's poolside served as the location where Bruno Bernard photographed Marilyn Monroe in 1949 — and where she met the agent who would launch her career.

San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farwestern Photo by Gregg M. Erickson, CC BY 3.0. One of California's first three major wind farms, developed in the 1980s at the natural wind funnel of San Gorgonio Pass, the farm peaked at over 4,200 turbines in 1987 and has since undergone decades of repowering — replacing many aging smaller turbines with fewer, larger ones that generate more energy.

Image: Farwestern Photo by Gregg M. Erickson | CC BY 3.0

San Jacinto Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wattewyl, CC BY 3.0. The San Jacinto Mountains rise from the desert floor in one of the most abrupt fault-scarp escarpments in North America, lifting San Jacinto Peak to 10,834 feet within miles of sea-level Palm Springs — and their granite faces gave birth to the Yosemite Decimal System for rock climbing.

Read more: San Jacinto Mountains on Qualla

Image: Wattewyl | CC BY 3.0

Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management, Public domain. Established in October 2000 across 280,071 acres of mountain wilderness south and west of Palm Springs, the monument protects nineteen endemic species and nearly twenty thousand acres of Cahuilla land — a rare instance where federal conservation and indigenous land rights converge in the same protected area.

Image: Bureau of Land Management | Public domain

Sunnylands

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toohool, CC0. Walter and Leonore Annenberg's 200-acre Rancho Mirage estate earned the nickname 'Camp David of the West' for hosting world leaders from seven presidencies — and the Impressionist art collection that once hung on its walls, including Picassos, Van Goghs, and Monets, now lives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Read more: Sunnylands on Qualla

Image: Toohool | CC0

Tahquitz Peak

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Crowell, CC BY-SA 4.0. An 8,846-foot granite peak named for a luminous spirit-demon of the Soboba Indian tribe, Tahquitz Peak is where rock climbers in the 1950s developed the Yosemite Decimal System — the difficulty rating scale that still governs climbing worldwide.

Read more: Tahquitz Peak on Qualla

Image: Benjamin Crowell | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Movie Colony

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BadNewsBear, CC BY-SA 4.0. Developed primarily in the 1930s and 1940s near Palm Springs' El Mirador Hotel, the Movie Colony's 170 homes housed Cary Grant, Jack Benny, Harold Lloyd, Steve McQueen, and David O. Selznick — a mid-century modernist neighborhood where the most famous faces in America came to disappear.

Read more: The Movie Colony on Qualla

Image: BadNewsBear | CC BY-SA 4.0

Thousand Palms

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bluesnote, CC BY-SA 4.0. A quiet Coachella Valley community where the San Andreas Fault creates a hidden oasis sheltering endangered species and twenty thousand acres of protected desert.

Read more: Thousand Palms on Qualla

Image: Bluesnote | CC BY-SA 4.0

Torney General Hospital

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The transformation of Palm Springs' grandest resort hotel into a wartime military hospital — and its second life as a modern trauma center — encapsulates a century of American ambition and reinvention.

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Walter Annenberg

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How a Philadelphia publisher's son built a media empire worth billions, befriended presidents and a queen, and ended his life giving most of it away — all while making Rancho Mirage his desert kingdom.

Read more: Walter Annenberg on Qualla

Big Morongo Canyon Preserve

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the juncture of two deserts and several mountain systems, Big Morongo Canyon shelters one of California's largest riparian oases and a staggering diversity of birds drawn to water in an otherwise dry landscape.

Image: Dicklyon | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cabot's Pueblo Museum

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jllm06, CC0. Cabot Yerxa spent three decades building a four-story Hopi-style pueblo by hand from desert salvage, then discovered two aquifers that would one day make Desert Hot Springs famous.

Read more: Cabot's Pueblo Museum on Qualla

Image: Jllm06 | CC0

Chuckawalla Bill

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

William Anthony Simon survived two wars and decades of desert wandering, then vanished into the Mojave — until a writer stumbled into his cave in 1968 and decided the world should know he had lived there.

Read more: Chuckawalla Bill on Qualla

Morongo Valley

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Originally uploaded by Conn, Kit, CC BY-SA 3.0. A high desert gateway community where movie cowboys, championship mountain bikers, and working-class families share a valley that fire has tested and the canyon next door has made famous.

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Image: Originally uploaded by Conn, Kit | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sand to Snow National Monument

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. In a single protected landscape, the elevation climbs from Coachella Valley sand to San Bernardino Mountain summits — a 10,000-foot journey through the most botanically rich national monument in the United States.

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Whitewater Preserve

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BookOfDisquiet, CC BY-SA 4.0. Year-round water in the Mojave Desert draws endangered birds, desert bighorn sheep, and mountain lions to a 2,200-acre canyon preserve where a former trout farm has become one of Southern California's most beloved wild places.

Read more: Whitewater Preserve on Qualla

Image: BookOfDisquiet | CC BY-SA 4.0

Acrisure Arena

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frederick Dennstedt from los angeles, usa, CC BY-SA 2.0. The desert's first major indoor arena opened in 2022, sold out its first hockey game in a market that had never seen professional ice hockey, and set an AHL attendance record in its first playoff season.

Read more: Acrisure Arena on Qualla

Image: Frederick Dennstedt from los angeles, usa | CC BY-SA 2.0

Coachella Valley National Wildlife Refuge

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 3,700-acre refuge protecting the last dune habitat of one of the world's most imperiled lizards — so fragile that nearly all of it remains closed to people.

Coachella Valley Preserve

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Z3lvs, CC0. Where the San Andreas Fault pushes water to the surface, California fan palms cluster in groves that have endured for thousands of years — and where desert pupfish survive in pools that feel like windows into the Pleistocene.

Image: Z3lvs | CC0

Barker Dam

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LCGS Russ, CC BY-SA 3.0. A dam built by cattlemen in Joshua Tree's boulder country, raised by a later rancher who needed more water, and now a gathering place for wildlife and hikers who follow the same logic the cattle did.

Read more: Barker Dam on Qualla

Image: LCGS Russ | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carapace Pavilion

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clipperdoug, CC0. Architecture students from USC spent three years designing, fabricating, and installing a shade pavilion in Joshua Tree that reimagines what a national park restroom building could look like — and might never need maintenance in your lifetime.

Read more: Carapace Pavilion on Qualla

Image: Clipperdoug | CC0

Desert Queen Mine

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. A gold mine in Joshua Tree that changed hands through murder, fraud, and court proceedings — and whose ruins document nearly a century of extraction from the Mojave granite.

Read more: Desert Queen Mine on Qualla

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Keys Desert Queen Ranch

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY 3.0. Bill Keys arrived in Joshua Tree in 1910 and spent six decades building a ranch, a reputation, and a legal record that included a manslaughter conviction — and a pardon won with help from the author of Perry Mason.

Read more: Keys Desert Queen Ranch on Qualla

Image: Jarek Tuszyński | CC BY 3.0

Little San Bernardino Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Z3lvs, CC0. A forty-mile range that forms the southern boundary of Joshua Tree National Park, carries the Colorado River Aqueduct along its base, and marks the visible line where the Mojave Desert meets the Coachella Valley.

Image: Z3lvs | CC0

Lost Horse Mine

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ciar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Johnny Lang tracked his missing horses into a valley in Joshua Tree in 1890, bought a gold claim he found there, and set in motion four decades of extraction that produced 10,000 ounces of gold and stripped the surrounding mountains bare.

Read more: Lost Horse Mine on Qualla

Image: Ciar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wall Street Mill

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The last intact gold-crushing mill in Joshua Tree is also the site of a killing — and the place where Bill Keys left a stone marker so plainspoken it became a monument.

Read more: Wall Street Mill on Qualla

Desert Christ Park

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zekerags, Public domain. During the Cold War atomic scare, an aircraft worker climbed a hillside in Yucca Valley and spent years placing steel-reinforced concrete apostles and a ten-foot figure of Jesus into the desert — a one-man act of prayer set in stone.

Read more: Desert Christ Park on Qualla

Image: Zekerags | Public domain

Escape Recording Studio

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 140-acre invitation-only recording compound in Pioneertown where Rüfüs Du Sol spent 51 days during a pandemic and emerged with their most celebrated album — and where the desert became the sound.

Read more: Escape Recording Studio on Qualla

Landers

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessie Eastland, CC BY-SA 3.0. A Mojave Desert community of nearly 3,000 people who call themselves Landroids, organized their skies into one of the densest concentrations of amateur observatories in the United States, and built a time machine out of plywood and determination.

Read more: Landers on Qualla

Image: Jessie Eastland | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pappy & Harriet's

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pappyswiki, CC BY-SA 4.0. A western movie set turned BBQ restaurant in Pioneertown where Paul McCartney and Robert Plant have performed on the same stage that once served as a backdrop for Roy Rogers — and where Anthony Bourdain once ate ribs.

Read more: Pappy & Harriet's on Qualla

Image: Pappyswiki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pioneertown Mountains Preserve

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BookOfDisquiet, CC BY 4.0. A 25,500-acre wild corridor in the Little San Bernardino Mountains where granite domes, volcanic mesas, and perennial streams stitch together two distinct desert worlds.

Image: BookOfDisquiet | CC BY 4.0

Giant Rock

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessie Eastland, CC BY-SA 4.0. A seven-story freestanding boulder in the Mojave Desert that has served as a home, a UFO convention site, an FAA-certified airstrip, and a launching pad for scientific balloons — sometimes simultaneously.

Read more: Giant Rock on Qualla

Image: Jessie Eastland | CC BY-SA 4.0

Integratron

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shamrox, CC BY-SA 3.0. A 38-foot wooden dome built in the California desert to specifications allegedly provided by Venusian visitors, funded partly by Howard Hughes, and now used for sound bath sessions with 22 quartz crystal bowls.

Read more: Integratron on Qualla

Image: Shamrox | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 1969 film about the last great desert manhunt in American history — the 1909 pursuit of a Chemehuevi-Paiute man through the Mojave — and the two very different stories its making set in motion.

A-Z West

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hexatekin, CC BY-SA 4.0. An 80-acre desert compound in Joshua Tree, California, where artist Andrea Zittel spent two decades turning daily life into art — and the weaving studio, ceramics workshop, and chicken coop into subject matter.

Read more: A-Z West on Qualla

Image: Hexatekin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Camp Dunlap

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 250,000-acre World War II Marine Corps training base in the California desert that trained artillery regiments for the Pacific — and whose concrete slabs became the foundation of Slab City.

Read more: Camp Dunlap on Qualla

Condor Field

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Mojave Desert airfield that served as a civil airport, a World War II Army glider school, a Navy auxiliary station, and eventually a Marine Corps expeditionary runway — a piece of ground worked by every branch of the American military over four decades.

Read more: Condor Field on Qualla

Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessie Eastland, CC BY-SA 4.0. The largest Marine Corps base in the United States, covering 1,102 square miles of Mojave Desert terrain used to train every combined-arms tactic the Corps knows — including operations in a fabricated 274-acre Middle Eastern city.

Image: Jessie Eastland | CC BY-SA 4.0

Morongo Basin

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A High Desert basin in the Mojave that holds Joshua Tree National Park, a massive Marine base, an alien-contact dome, and a handful of communities where artists, veterans, and desert eccentrics have built lives far outside the California mainstream.

Read more: Morongo Basin on Qualla

Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Over 100 large-scale assemblage sculptures spread across 5 acres of Joshua Tree desert, built from discarded appliances, bicycle parts, and industrial debris — and deliberately left to decay.

Rancho De La Luna

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davidcatching, CC BY-SA 4.0. A Joshua Tree recording studio founded in 1993 that became the home of the Desert Sessions, attracted Queens of the Stone Age, Iggy Pop, PJ Harvey, and Dave Grohl, and inspired Anthony Bourdain to film an episode of No Reservations there.

Read more: Rancho De La Luna on Qualla

Image: Davidcatching | CC BY-SA 4.0

Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians of California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The descendants of a Chemehuevi band who settled near Twentynine Palms in 1867, lost their homeland after the Willie Boy incident of 1909, and spent generations rebuilding their presence across two California counties.

World Famous Crochet Museum

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Los Paseos from Earth, CC BY-SA 2.0. A former one-hour photo hut in Joshua Tree, painted acid green, that has housed a free crochet collection since 2006 — founded by an artist who doesn't know how to crochet.

Image: Los Paseos from Earth | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ruby Lee Mill Site

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeffunit, CC BY-SA 3.0. A 1930s stamp mill in the Hexie Mountains of Joshua Tree National Park, built to process quartz rock with trace gold and silver, named for the lode claim filed in 1936, and eventually lost when the land became a national park.

Read more: Ruby Lee Mill Site on Qualla

Image: Jeffunit | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pinto Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darkest tree, CC BY-SA 3.0. A range of dark gneiss running east-west across the north-central portion of Joshua Tree National Park, topped at 1,403 meters, flanked by wilderness established by Congress in 2009, and dominated by creosote bush rather than the Joshua trees that give the park its name.

Read more: Pinto Mountains on Qualla

Image: Darkest tree | CC BY-SA 3.0

Desert Sunlight Solar Farm

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Department of the Interior, CC BY-SA 2.0. A 550-megawatt photovoltaic farm covering six square miles near Desert Center, California — built by First Solar, completed in January 2015, and expanded with over 2,000 megawatt-hours of battery storage in subsequent years.

Image: U.S. Department of the Interior | CC BY-SA 2.0

Eagle Mountain, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Kaiser Steel ghost town in the Colorado Desert whose school closed in 1987, whose streets have since appeared in Tenet and Constantine, and whose 2023 sale for $22.5 million to an undisclosed buyer has left its future unresolved.

Coxcomb Mountains

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most rugged mountains in Joshua Tree National Park, occupying the park's easternmost corner at the boundary between the Mojave and Colorado deserts, reaching 4,482 feet at Spectre Peak and visited by almost no one.

Read more: Coxcomb Mountains on Qualla

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wonder Valley, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nburkhart, CC BY-SA 4.0. A High Desert valley east of Twentynine Palms where the federal Small Tract Act of 1938 distributed five-acre homestead parcels, creating a landscape of mostly-abandoned cabins that has attracted artists and desert eccentrics for decades.

Image: Nburkhart | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cadiz Dunes Wilderness

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management, Public domain. A congressional wilderness area established in 1994 within the Mojave Trails National Monument, where wind-blown sand from the Cadiz dry lake has built dunes across the Cadiz Valley between the Calumet and Old Woman Mountains.

Read more: Cadiz Dunes Wilderness on Qualla

Image: Bureau of Land Management | Public domain

Hector Mine

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Mojave Desert clay mine that gave its name to the mineral hectorite and to the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake — discovered by bentonite prospectors in 1931, flooded in 1961, and now primarily producing silver, lead, and zinc.

Read more: Hector Mine on Qualla

Lavic Lake Volcanic Field

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeff Cuneo, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 100-square-kilometer field of basaltic pahoehoe lava in the central Mojave Desert, with four Holocene cinder cones — including Pisgah Crater, a 100-meter cone alongside Route 66 that last erupted roughly 25,000 years ago.

Image: Jeff Cuneo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bagdad-Chase Mine

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Homechicken, CC BY-SA 4.0. The largest single gold and copper producer in San Bernardino County history — discovered in 1898, peaked between 1904 and 1916, survived the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression, operated through World War II, and produced $6 million in gold from the Mojave Desert before closing in the early 1950s.

Read more: Bagdad-Chase Mine on Qualla

Image: Homechicken | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ragtown, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Homechicken, CC BY-SA 4.0. A ghost town whose very name tells its story — a rough-and-tumble mining camp built on tent cloth and copper dreams in the Mojave Desert.

Read more: Ragtown, California on Qualla

Image: Homechicken | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stedman, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Mojave Desert ghost town where Scandinavian miners nicknamed their camp 'Copenhagen,' water was piped in from miles away, and a 1932 thunderstorm washed away nearly a mile of railroad.

Read more: Stedman, California on Qualla

Camp Cady

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rue7wiki, CC BY-SA 4.0. A forgotten Army outpost on the Mojave Road where soldiers guarded a water hole, Paiute raids shaped its brief history, and California declared it a landmark a century after it was abandoned.

Read more: Camp Cady on Qualla

Image: Rue7wiki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Dolores Waterpark

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dzealand, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 273-acre desert waterpark built by one man for his family in the Mojave, which later became a regional attraction, went bankrupt, and emerged as a hauntingly photogenic ruin that musicians and filmmakers keep rediscovering.

Read more: Lake Dolores Waterpark on Qualla

Image: Dzealand | CC BY-SA 4.0

Newberry Springs, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Missvain, CC BY 4.0. A Route 66 desert community where summer temperatures average 107°F, the Bagdad Café became an international film location, and one of the largest aquifers in the American West runs deep beneath the sand.

Image: Missvain | CC BY 4.0

San Bernardino County, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessie Terwilliger from Beaumont, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0. The largest county in the contiguous United States, where over 80 percent of the land is federally owned, more wilderness areas exist than in any other U.S. county, and a population of over two million people lives almost entirely in a narrow strip along one edge.

Image: Jessie Terwilliger from Beaumont, CA, USA | CC BY 2.0

Desert Studies Center

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilson44691, Public domain. A California State University field station at Zzyzx where a fraudulent health spa became legitimate science, two fish species found nowhere else on Earth survive in an artificial lake, and researchers from seven campuses study what desert ecosystems are actually doing.

Read more: Desert Studies Center on Qualla

Image: Wilson44691 | Public domain

Zzyzx, California

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilson44691, CC0. A place name invented in 1944 to be the last word in the English language, attached to a fraudulent health resort on federal land, which was eventually evicted and replaced by legitimate science — but the name, absurd as it is, has stuck.

Read more: Zzyzx, California on Qualla

Image: Wilson44691 | CC0

Amboy Crater

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Mayer (mav), CC BY-SA 3.0. A dormant Mojave cinder cone whose 70-square-kilometer lava field last erupted roughly 10,000 years ago, briefly hosted Hollywood film crews who lit fires inside the crater to simulate a journey to Earth's core, and served as a training ground for Apollo 15 astronauts.

Read more: Amboy Crater on Qualla

Image: Daniel Mayer (mav) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bristol Lake

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA. Original uploader was Tillman at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0. A 23-by-20-kilometer dry lake in the Mojave where salt evaporation has been industrial business for over a century, minerals arrange themselves in concentric rings that mirror their chemistry, and calcium-chloride brines hint at possible magma lurking beneath the surface.

Read more: Bristol Lake on Qualla

Image: Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA. Original uploader was Tillman at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 2.0