DESERT FANTASY ; DESERT REALITY

DESERT FANTASY

DESERT REALITY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Visionary Architects Who Give Palm Srings its Distinct Look

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Widdled, Rotten, and Abandoned: How Bombay Beach has Gone From Apocalyptic Wasteland to Offbeat Art Hub Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House Epitomises Desert Modernism in Palm Springs How a South Pasadena matron used her wits and wealth to create Joshua Tree National Park

Five Easy Rock Climbing Areas in Joshua Tree National Park

THE VISIONARY ARCHITECTS WHO GIVE PALM SPRINGS ITS DISTINCT LOOK. 16-17

Albert Frey Albert Frey, arrived in Palm Springs in 1934. He came to design a building for his partner’s brother, Dr. J.J. Kocher. Frey was asked to design a building that could be used as both office and living space. He designed a multiuse building with the office at street level, a second story studio apartment and a free-standing carport. The Kocher-Sampon Building was another giant step toward what would become the desert’s own signature brand of architecture. John Porter Clark came to Palm Springs from Pasadena in 1932. He was sent to establish the local office of the architectural firm of Van Pelt & Lind. A few years later, Clark & Frey left Van Pelt & Lind and formed their own firm. Clark practiced his craft alone when Frey returned to NYC and upon Frey’s return they resumed their partnership. Clark is credited with designing the Welwood Murray Memorial Library, the San Jacinto Hotel, the Ludington House in Rancho Mirage and many residential projects in Smoke Tree Ranch.

E. Stewart Williams E. Stewart Williams and his brother, Roger returned to the desert after serving in the military and joined forces with their father, Harry, in the firm of Williams, Williams & Williams. The firm took on both civic, commercial and residential projects. E. Stewart Williams studied at Cornell University’s School of Architecture. After graduation he traveled to Europe where he was influenced by Scandinavian Modernism and the organic, natural materials they used in their designs. According to E. Stewart Williams, the design of Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs home was the project that accelerated his career and made him one of the most sought-after architects at that time.

Palmer & Krisel Another architectural firm that added to the Palm Springs Modern experience was Palmer & Krisel. They worked almost exclusively for the Alexander Construction Company. The company was the first company in the desert to take on mass developments and they built more homes in Palm Springs than any other developers/builders during that time period. George and Robert Alexander – and their wives – were tragically killed in a plane crash in 1965. There were other local architects and designers including

Hugh Kaptur, Howard Lapham, Larry Lapham, Walter White, Robson Chambers, who are credited with this explosion of modern design in the Coachella Valley. Their designs stamped the Desert Modern style into the homes, country clubs, hotels, banks, libraries, schools, churches, civic buildings, gas stations and retails spaces that all make up the unique atmosphere of the greater Palm Springs area. These visionaries succeeded in creating the architectural infrastructure that has sustained the desert’s classic style.

Donald Wexler Donald Wexler and Richard Harrison formed their partnership in 1952. The simple post-and-beam, steelframed homes that they designed were a direct result of Wexler’s interest in engineering. Wexler believed that using steel for building worked best in the desert. Steel prices soared while

he was designing homes for the Twin Palms development and they were only able to complete seven steel homes. Wexler and Harrison produced a large body of work, including houses, schools, hotels and banks. Donald Wexler is also credited for designing the Palm Springs International Airport.

William Cody William F. Cody graduated from USC right after the war ended and he came to Palm Springs to design an addition for Nellie Coffman at The Desert Inn. While he was here he was hired to design a new hotel, the Del Marcos Hotel. The Del Marcos was the project that defined his style and

established him as an architect of note in the desert. The Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded Cody a “Creative Mention Award” in 1949 for his work on the Del Marcos, citing the project as an example of new resort hotel architecture.

WHITTLED, ROTTED, AND ABANDONED: HOW BOMBAY BEACH HAS GONE FROM APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND TO OFFBEAT ART HUB 24-25

It’s mid-afternoon at the lowest bar in the western hemisphere, and a bartender named Scheherazade pours drinks for a smattering of regulars, mostly eccentric retirees. They talk about nothing and everything, from sports to whether their town has enough people left to justify the cost of keeping its last ATM in service. We’re an hour southeast of Palm Springs, California in the hottest and driest part of the Sonoran Desert, where the green highway sign welcoming visitors to Bombay Beach counts its population at 295. But it hasn’t been updated since the 2010 census, and those who congregate here, at the Ski Inn, think the actual number is under 200. “It can be hard for people here,” Scheherazade explains, with the compassionate smile of someone equipped to handle it. There’s no gas station, no laundromat, only a sparsely-stocked convenience store. The nearest hospital is a 45-minute drive away. Temperatures routinely reach 120 degrees in the summer, and, as Scheherazade has witnessed, “When people don’t have AC, they die.”

Don’t get me wrong, Scheherazade—the daughter of a serious “1001 Arabian Nights” fan—is cheerful and welcoming as can be. But she knows media people love stories, and every kind have passed through here: documentary filmmakers, lifestyle reporters, architecture magazines, and Anthony Bourdain. All have been curious about the apocalyptic ruin of a resort town outside Ski Inn’s doors.

Lately, most have wanted to know about the Bombay Beach Biennale, taking place in the latter half of April. Scheherazade can help with that. She shows me a thick photo book rich with text about the bacchanalian spring arts festival that has put Bombay Beach on the cultural map. Like most locals, she’s become a de facto docent for the the dozen or so permanent art instal-

lations the Biennale, and other progressive art groups, have left behind. Some, like a supersized tesseract cube, weather alongside the remnants of the town’s demolished waterfront, a jagged collection of debris known as the “Bombay Beach Ruins.” Its structures have rotted beyond definition, whittled by salty winds and triple digit temperatures i nto a collection of splintered

stumps. But the ruins aren’t confined to the beach. A 30year exodus from Bombay Beach left scores of discarded homes and trailers long-since abandoned to the elements. They’re peppered throughout the surviving remains of town, windowless husks blanketed in graffiti, surrounded by broken furniture and rubble. Bombay Beach has been in this state for decades, teetering toward ghost town status.

When the streets empty out on scorching hot days, they offer little compelling evidence that the place even exists in the present tense: There’s just a cell phone tower, the occasional “No Trespassing” sign, and a pirate flag flying over one of the still-functioning inhabited homes. Describing Bombay Beach as it was in 2012, some blurry, drunk guy from a YouTube clip shot at the Ski Inn put it

best: “If the state of California needed an enema, this is where they’d shove the tube.” The perception has changed since the artists got a hold of the place. One blighted home now opens up to reveal the Bombay Beach Opera House, a cerulean blue performance space, displaying a cardboard piano and hundreds of discarded flip-flops. Another small home has been reborn as the Toy House, covered in

vibrantly colored plastic toys that seem to grow on its surface like fungi. The effort has brought a second life to the little zombie burg, and Bombay’s barely-on-the-grid residents are enjoying the tourism renaissance. “You’ve just got to experience it,” Scheherazade encourages me. “People from all over the world come here,” plugs my newest friend, a retired Marine who moved here from Texas last year, and clearly got started at the bar a few hours before I did. Timothy Keith Zimmerman spotted my camera lens and sussed out that if I’m not yet-another Instagram influencer, I must be another journalist. “Are you making a documentary?” he asks brightly. “Or blogging?” Bourdain allegedly liked the patty melt, so I order one and chat for a while before I go to see the ghost boat and the metro station sign some creative people have planted on the world’s crappiest beach. Part of Bombay Beach’s allure is the irony. The thing that keeps it alive is the same thing that’s still killing it: It’s located on the edge of an ecological disaster. And yes, people from all over the world come a long way to see it. The rundown community sits on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, a massive desert lake whose very existence reads like a cautionary

tale about the unintended consequences of manmade climate change. It stands 227 feet below sea level on the southern terminus of the San Andreas fault, which over millions of years carved out a desert basin lower than any point in North America outside Death Valley. Thanks to a cataclysmic irrigation miscalculation circa 1905, the Colorado River gouged a mile-wide flood channel funneling water into the land called Salton Trough for two years. By the time they plugged the breach, Salton Sea had emerged as California’s largest inland body of

water surpassing all lakes. Viewed from the highway hugging its eastern shore, the massive salt lake still shows all the postcard appeal that helped it become a hot weekend getaway destination beginning in the 1950s. The scenic Santa Rosa mountains rise above its opposite banks, their peaks reflected on a shimmering blue surface nearly twice the area of the state’s beloved Lake Tahoe. But like any desert mirage, things look less refreshing up close. The sea’s brackish water takes on a murky brown cast, beleaguered by bacterial blooms and subsequent health department warnings against swimming. Bones in various states of decomposition litter beaches, revealing the sea’s episodic history of bird death by the thousands, fish by the millions. The drastic ecological shifts might prompt sulfuric gases to burp from the lake bottom, unleashing a stench of death potent enough to occasionally carry all the way to Los Angeles, 120 miles away. It wasn’t always like this. Some billboards marking the

entrance to Bombay hint at better times, when the Salton Sea thrived as one of the greatest fishing holes in the country. It was billed as the next Riviera, attracting boaters, celebrities, and speculators sold on the novelty of beachfront property in the arid desert. One billboard displays a vintage, black and white photo of women in ‘50s era swimsuits and hairdos, riding sideby-side on water skis. It reads “The Last Resort,” in bold yellow letters. Faded imagery and scorched edges suggest the ads are relics of Bombay Beach’s mid-century heyday, and it’s easy to imagine a Don Draper cruising past it with the top town, driving the fam out of the city for a long weekend of boating and relaxing. The history is real enough, but the Last Resort billboards went up only a few years back, among the first of the Biennale group’s efforts to activate Bombay Beach. Since 2011, they have steadily turned Bombay Beach into a remote desert arts district— something of a Burning Man meets Marfa, Texas—on the banks of a dying salty sea.

The loose collective of artists and bon vivants who organize the spring festival possess the resources to commission original artwork from renowned artists, and enough social clout to show up in Getty Image stock photo searches. There’s an Italian prince, and a scion of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical empire. After a couple of independent filmmakers in their circle discovered that the Bombay ruins made an ideal location to shoot zombie movies, they all became enthralled by its squalor, and found that beachfront lots could be purchased out of foreclosure for as little as $800. “It’s soil that interesting fun art can be made in,” says Biennale organizer Stefan Ashkenazy, owner of West Hollywood’s Petit Ermitage hotel, and co-creator of “The Last Resort.” This includes the billboards as well as the storage container hotel he hopes to establish on site, where each room’s interior will be designed by a different commissioned artist. As a group, Ashkenazy and friends now own more than 40 lots within the town’s 30some gridded blocks, which they likewise endow to artists, imploring them to treat the corroded beach town as a canvas for free expression, experimentation, and spectacle. Several in the group

have ultimately established themselves out here as parttime residents, mingling at the Ski Inn and working through the fall and winter to produce the festival. They’ve hosted opera singers and ballerinas, and created photo galleries and sculpture gardens. The results range from jarring to fascinating to inspirational. For example, Biennale commissioned New York artist Greg Haberny for its first year. Best known for burning his own artwork at Banksy’s dystopian Dismaland satirical theme park, Haberny’s reputation for making art out of destruction suggested he would be a natural fit for the ruins. “I thought getting a smashed house with no roof on it and walls missing would be perfect for him to do whatever Greg does,” recalls Ashkenazy with a laugh. “Maybe drive a car into it, blow it up, crash a plane into it…” But when Haberny saw the building, the context of the surroundings sent him in another direction. “As opposed to causing carnage, building a huge audacious art thing and then burning it down,” he thought, “Why don’t we turn around and create a contemporary art museum that actually gives back to the community?” They rebuilt the roof, repainted the walls, and opened the Hermitage Mu-

seum, which Haberny still curates, bringing in progressive artists from both coasts. The work they leave behind is available for viewing seven days a week. The keys to it and other installations are kept behind the bar at the very odd Ski Inn. Another outstanding work is the Bombay Beach Drive In. Conspicuous for its kitschy, atomic age sign, it’s a motley collection of wrecked cars lined up as though parked for a drive-in movie. Except instead of a movie screen, they face a blank, white truck trailer. It resonates as conceptual art, and does function as a working theater used by the community. Ashkenazy recounts scavenging the wrecks from an Imperial Valley junkyard, hand-selecting cars to match the crumbling town’s post-apocalyptic veneer. “If you don’t know the history,” he points out, “it looks like a bomb hit it.” A bomb didn’t hit Bombay Beach. Agricultural runoff did, again and again. It turns out, even when things were looking good for Salton Sea, they were looking bad. A 1957 Sports Illustrated article details how, in the late 1920s, an economic development-minded Department of Wildlife used state horse betting taxes to populate the marine lake with fish exciting enough to fish for sport: striped bass,

salmon, pompano, halibut. None of them took. Finally, after 28 years of this, orange mouth corvina from the Sea of Cortez offered a means to capitalize on the accidental lake. The corvina quickly multiplied to millions, growing up to 30 pounds. Sports Illustrated rightly projected that Salton Sea would become an angler’s dream. Throughout the 1960s, sportfishers averaged nearly two fish per hour. They barely needed bait. Sea birds joined in the bounty, altering migratory patterns to feast on other fish that soon joined the budding ecosystem. Bombay Beach flourished. Guys like Frank Sinatra and Sonny Bono sang its praises. Weekenders out of Los Angeles and San Diego started coming so frequently, they bought properties to keep their boats here full-time. Those of retirement age settled in more permanently. But great fishing wasn’t the Sports Illustrated story’s only accurate prediction about the salty lake. “The rate of salinity will increase steadily,” it read. “Scientists estimate that if this rate continues the Sea will provide up to 25 years of fishing before it becomes too salty to support fish life.” The place was dying from the over salination. Salton Sea has no outlet. Salt-laden irrigation waste-

water still trickles in, but water can only leave by evaporation, which means salt levels always trend up. When Bombay Beach opened for business, salinity measured around 38 parts per thousand, roughly the same as ocean water. According to Tim Krantz, it now measures over 60. The University of Redlands professor maintains the Salton Sea Database Program, which tracks changes to the lake’s changing

geography and biodiversity. He explains that early fish and bird deaths could be attributed to fertilizers and toxins in the agricultural runoff feeding the lake. But since 2003, the hyper-salinity has exterminated the lake’s roughly three dozen species of fish, and the birds have stopped coming. The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that the Salton Sea is shrinking. Beginning in 2018, a reapportionment of Colorado

River water is now decreasing the volume of irrigation wastewater spilling into the lake. This means water that evaporates each year will not be replaced. Krantz says the 370-square mile lake has now already shrunk to 360 square miles since the fall, and the rate will only increase. Because, while much bigger than Lake Tahoe, Salton Sea isn’t nearly as deep—only 50 feet, according to Krantz. Put to scale, “That’s like a football

field with one inch of water in it.” He predicts a 40-percent decrease of the lake over the next fifteen years— exposing 140 square miles of dry lake bed—which will likely release toxic dust into the desert valley. The crumbling buildings are another story. I sought out one of the longest-tenured Bombay Beach residents to maybe find out what turned a community of 1,200 people into the wreck it is today. Louie Knight at

first visited Bombay Beach as a young man in 1951, when his father decided to buy a place here. The younger Knight moved out here in the ‘70s, and soon became the chief and sole operator of the Bombay Beach volunteer fire department. I find him outside, working on the town fire truck. He tells me I’m the second impromptu interview he’s agreed to that day. There’s no law enforcement to speak of out here,

so every kind of emergency falls to Knight: putting out fires, coping with collapsing structures, and performing welfare checks of residents who may have passed in their homes. He says the toughest problem to solve is visitors driving cars onto the beach. “If you get stuck,” he warns, “it will take us a couple days to get you out.” When I ask about the ruins, he mentions floods in the 1970s, which led to construction of a huge protective berm that blocks any view of the lake from town. Water-damaged structures left on the wrong side of the berm are responsible for the debris-ridden beach. With the fish die-offs, part-time residents visited less frequently, leaving trailers and homes empty in their absence. As the price of copper shot up over $3 per pound in the mid-2000s, Knight says part-timers would come home to find their properties ransacked and stripped for wires, walls torn open, appliances and valuables stolen. With the cost of repairs now exceeding the value of the property, lots were abandoned to foreclosure and the elements. But today, property values are coming back. Lots that couldn’t fetch a grand in 2011 now list at $20,000 and up. Perched on its dying lake, Bombay Beach isn’t

destined to become the sort of storied urban neighborhood that becomes gentrified once the artists moved in. But the attention is making things more interesting for the seniors who come to this out-of-way wasteland, 223 feet below sea level. The Ski Inn has lasted this long thanks mainly to snowbirds; retired folks in RVs seeking a mild winter at mineral bath resorts a few miles uphill. Groups will show up at the Ski Inn to chat over beers, and keep up a habit that started in the

1950s, when vacationers would write their names on dollar bills and stick them to the walls. Decades on, uncounted thousands of dollar bills plaster the place like wallpaper, covering every wall, door, ceiling, and even ceiling fan blade. As many older generations have passed on, the occasional snowbird has settled into the outlier appeal of the Bombay community. When my bartender, Scheherazade, first arrived here as a snowbird herself, a little less than 10 years ago. So did

Timothy, the Marine Corps vet. After multiple tours, he’d been coping with undiagnosed PTSD and the death of his sister when he walked into the Ski Inn for the first time last year. Legend has it that the bartender working that day took one look at him and said, “Welcome home.” Both cherish their oddball family at the edge of nowhere, and say despite the ambience it’s still pretty lively for a dying town. Zimmerman tells me, earnestly, “I never knew what love was, ‘til I moved out here.”

R I C H A R D N E U T R A’ S KAUFMANN HOUSE EPITOMISES DESERT MODERNISM 38-39

The second in our series highlighting the best buildings in Palm Springs during the city’s Modernism Week is Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House, one of the most revered examples of residential architecture in the style. Built in 1946, the boxy two-storey residence has many defining elements of

modern architecture – a flat roof, pale exterior and shaded outdoor spaces – tailored to the arid climate of the California desert. The second in our series highlighting the best buildings in Palm Springs during the city’s Modernism Week is Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House, one of the most re-

vered examples of residential architecture in the style. Built in 1946, the boxy, spacious two-storey residence has many defining elements of modern architecture – a flat roof (perfect for dry climates,) pale exterior and shaded outdoor spaces – tailored to the arid climate of the California desert.

The house in Palm Springs is predominantly oriented east-west, maximising sunrise and sunset views. The layout includes five bedrooms and five bathrooms, with a grassy backyard and pool overlooking the San Jacinto Mountains to the west. Large sliding glass doors open onto patios that are

lined with vertical, moveable metal fins. These slats enable the rooms to be shaded and cooled during extreme heatwaves, and closed up during infrequent sandstorms. The house has a crossshaped plan, with a square living and dining room at the centre, and wings that extend out in cardinal directions.

To the west is a kitchen and service rooms, accessed by a covered breezeway, with a master bedroom to the east. The south wing comprises two covered walkways separated by a single massive stone wall, while another open path leads north past a patio and finally coming to a stop at a pair of bedrooms.

The Kaufmann House is one of the most famous buildings by Neutra, who was a key figure of the modernist architecture movement. He was lauded for designing homes that were tailored to the warm California climate, using ample glazing, boxy constructions, light facades, and outdoor living areas. The architect championed the importance of “ready-for-anything” designs that have open, multi-use spaces, and coined the interesting concept “The Changing House” for an article he wrote in 1947 for the Los Angeles Times newspaper. Born in Vienna in 1892, Neutra studied under architects Adolf Loos, Max Fabiani and Karl Mayreder. After serving in the Balkans (Great War,) he practised with landscape architect Gustav Ammann in Switzerland, and then Erich Mendelsohn. In 1923 he moved to the US, where he worked with Frank Lloyd Wright and close friend Rudolf Schindler. Neutra started his own practice in 1930, where he designed many Californian homes based around simple geometry, clean lines and the open airy construction. A handful of his projects are located in Palm Springs, which – thanks to its location two hours east of Hollywood – became a hotbed of modernist architecture during the

mid-20th century. Movie stars and celebrities in the 1950s and 1960s hired architects to build contemporary weekend residences that were in vogue at the time. The Kaufmann House was at one point owned by American singer Barry Manilow, and later rehabilitated by Marmol Radziner + Associates in the 1990s. Restored details include the pool house, tennis courts, and sheet-metal fascia that lines the roof. The property was also enlarged to suit Neutra’s vision for a desert retreat, and replacement stonework including what surrounds the swimming pool in the back yard was mined from a quarry in Saltlake Utah to match the

original construction. In 1996, the house was designated a historic site by the Palm Springs Historic Site Preservation Board. It remains a private residence, but nonetheless features as a stop on architecture tours of the city, when it can be glimpsed from the street. Palm Springs is celebrating its status as a modernist mecca from 15 to 25 February 2018, when the annual Modernism Week takes place. Dezeen is publishing the utmost important examples of the city’s great mid-century buildings every day to coincide with the event.

HOW A SOUTH PASADENA MATRON USED HER WITS AND WEALTH TO CREATE JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK

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Nobody looks at the mural. Tourists keep their heads down as they walk past. They scan maps, reach for keys, tell their children to use the bathroom. Considering possible destinations, they say, “Did you want to do Hidden Valley and Keys Ranch?” Or, “We can start at Skull Rock.” They don’t notice the image of a gray-haired woman in a wide-brimmed hat staring out at them. The very definition of serene. Determined. To her right loom stark rock formations and groves of surreal Joshua trees. Flowers bloom at her feet in bright purples and oranges. Look

closely and you’ll see a pair of pencil-legged Gambel’s quail and a roadrunner enjoying the desert Eden she single-handedly preserved. The mural at a federal visitors center is a tribute to the South Pasadena matron who devoted so very much of her life to saving nearly 1 million acres of desert that would one day become Joshua Tree National Park. “It wouldn’t have happened without her, that’s the bottom line,” said Lary Dilsaver, author of “Protecting the Desert: A History of Joshua Tree National Park.” “There wouldn’t be a Joshua Tree without her,

and in that way she was just as potent as any man.” In California lore, the story of how John Muir persuaded Teddy Roosevelt to help preserve Yosemite is legendary. In 1903, Muir and Roosevelt camped in the wilderness for three days as Muir showed him Yosemite’s stunning vistas and valleys. Decades later, the matron would convince another president named Roosevelt that Joshua Tree held its own otherworldly beauty. Her story isn’t as well known as Muir’s. But it should be. Her name is Minerva Hamilton Hoyt. She has been hailed as the first desert con-

servationist and called the Woman of the Joshua Trees and the Apostle of the Cacti. She even has a cactus named after her: Mammillaria hamiltonhoytea an ode to her name. Born on a cotton plantation in Durant, Miss., in 1866, she fell in love with the desert in the 1890s while traveling west by train with her husband, Dr. Sherman A. Hoyt. Later, she recalled being transfixed by this “world of strange and inexpressible beauty, of mystery and singular aloofness, which is yet so filled with peace.” The couple settled in a leafy estate on Buena Vista Street in South Pasadena, where Hoyt embraced the region’s civic life — as president of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, head of the Boys and Girls Club of Los Angeles, and a founding member of the Valley Hunt Club, which started the Tournament of Roses.

Her teas and garden parties merited write-ups in newspapers. And her lush five-acre garden was listed by Forbes as among the top 14 most important gardens in America. Still, the desert beckoned. “Those early days in the California town were busy and interesting, yet the call of the desert … remained persistent and I found myself frequently invading it on horseback or in a buckboard” wagon, she wrote decades later in a letter to desert conservationists. She described camping in the desert in the ‘10s with a maid as her companion: “During nights in the open, lying in a snug sleeping bag, I soon learned the charm of a Joshua Forest. … Above, the bright desert stars wheeled majestically toward the west, a timepiece for the wakeful.” Some historians say her devotion to the desert appeared to grow deeper in the wake of 2 tragedies. She lost her son in infancy and her husband died in 1918. She was 52 and never married again. As the years went on, she turned to the peaceful landscape for solace from her pain. Hoyt’s transition from desert lover to desert activist began in the 1920s, spurred in part by the desecration of a flat plain that lies along what

is now California Highway 62 near Morongo. It was known as Devil’s Garden. When Hoyt arrived in California, the area was abundant with immense barrel cactuses, spiky yuccas, fuzzy chollas and splashes of wildflowers. But as desert gardens became popular in Los Angeles in the 1910s, landscapers ripped up plants from their habitat and carted them off to the city. By the 1920s, the desert wonderland had been stripped bare. (Today, the flora of Devil’s Garden have never fully recovered.) Hoyt described similar devastation in an appeal to conservationists in 1929. “Over thirty years ago I spent my first night in the Mojave desert of California and was entranced by the magnificence of the Joshua grove in which we were camping and which was thickly sown with desert juniper and many rare forms of desert plant life,” she wrote. “A month ago … I visited the same spot again,” she continued. “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.” Hoyt vowed to protect other areas from a similar fate.

In 1928, the California State Park Assn. hired landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (whose father designed New York City’s Central Park) to identify areas that should be included in a state park system. By then, Hoyt had established a reputation as a desert expert, and Olmstead asked her to prepare a report on the outstanding features of Inyo, Mono, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In Southern California, Hoyt selected 1 million acres extending from the Salton Sea to Twentynine Palms. However, she soon decided this wilderness, with its magnificent boulders and bizarre plants, deserved national park status. Today, Joshua Tree National Park is celebrated on Instagram feeds and on Facebook. It’s the backdrop for music videos, rock climbing, fashion spreads and commercials. But for much of U.S. history, the desert was reviled as a wasteland, hot and lifeless. When the explorer and politician John C. Fremont first described the Joshua tree in 1844, as “the most repulsive tree in the vegetable kingdom.” In order to persuade people to protect the desert, Hoyt knew she would first have to persuade them to love the desert. And so in 1929 and 1930 she staged three lavish

and increasingly extravagant installations at flower and horticultural shows in New York, Boston and London. For the Garden Club of America’s Flower Show, she filled seven freight cars with desert rocks, plants and sand and had them shipped to New York. Desert flowers were flown out twice a day to preserve the “velvet texture” of their blooms. She told fawning newspaper reporters that she stored the airlifted plants in the bathtub in her hotel. (There is no evidence that she suffered any guilt about desecrating her beloved desert in order to save it.) The Associated Press reported that her London exhibition was so popular that a policeman had to be stationed in front of the cacti and stuffed coyotes to “keep the folks from crowding too hard against the ropes.” Hoyt won gold medals at the shows, but more important, she amassed an army of powerful allies. After seeing her show in New York, William Jardine, agriculture secretary under President Calvin Coolidge, said Hoyt had “succeeded in bringing the West to the East.” In England, Princess Mary was said to have stopped by.

tened to her,” Dilsaver said. “The fact that she was able to override Roger Toll’s 170page report denying the park indicates the extent of her power.” Hoyt had an iron will, but she softened it with a Southern hostess’s charm. In a 1935 telegram to Arno B. Cammerer, director of the National Park Service, she wrote that she was “delighted” to hear he was in California and asked if he would meet to discuss the park. If the park director’s wife was accompanying him, Hoyt said, she could “Arrange a party in my garden for you both.”

When Hoyt founded the International Desert Conservation League in March of 1930, the honorary vice presidents of the board included museum directors and university presidents, and the founder of the U.S. Forest Service. By 1934, Hoyt’s group had become powerful enough that the National Park Service was forced to take her proposal for a new park seriously. And so, in March of that year, the agency dispatched Roger Toll, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, to the desert. Toll was a major player, and his opinion carried or destroyed a number of places,” Dilsaver said. “If he

said no, that was the end of it.” Hoyt met Toll in Palm Springs with her chauffeur and the desert botanist Philip Munz. On her desert excursions, Hoyt often looked as if she was hosting a tea — dressed in long skirts, hats and heels. They spent three days touring the desert together at a relentless pace, but the weather was cold and unpleasant and Toll was not impressed. In a letter to the director of National Parks, Toll acknowledged that parts of the region might be valuable for local and state use, but added it is “lacking in any distinctive, superlative, outstanding feature that

would give it sufficient national importance to justify the establishment of a national park.” He recommended that Hoyt’s proposed 1-million-acre monument be reduced to a particularly nice grove of Joshua trees on 138,240 acres. Hoyt was furious. She demanded that Park Service officials send someone else to survey her park, someone who understood the desert, someone who understood California. A few months later, they did. “She did not hold political position, but she knew the power brokers and they lis-

In a telegram a year earlier, she invited another federal official to a picnic to discuss the park, “We won’t take no for an answer. Can meet you at train or my house My automobile is at your disposal while here please wire my expense.” Around the same time, Hoyt decided to use her extensive network of several connections to reach out to the current sitting president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She received a letter of introduction from California Gov. James Rolph Jr. Then, she sent the president two photo albums, and they would

change everything. Fortunetly a pristine copy of one album still exists, tucked away in a dark, refrigerated storeroom in the archives of Joshua Tree National Park. Unless you asked for it however, you would never know it was there. “Today we would probably do something in the video realm, if we were trying to sell people on the park. She didn’t have that capability,” said Joe Zarki, a retired historian at the park. “This was her way of getting the visual significance of the park to a really high-powered audience in Washington, D.C.”

There are a few news clippings, but the album mostly holds black-and-white photographs commissioned by Hoyt and taken by Stephen Willard, a famous landscape photographer of the day. They are faded but timeless — towering, multi-armed Joshua trees, flatlands dotted with creosote and smoke trees, spindly ocotillos and the thrilling view of a real life desert oasis. There are even a few panoramas that were created by taping two or three images together. In the second half of the book, the gardener in Hoyt shines through, with photos of flowers in full bloom

hand-painted to approximate their true glory. Henry Harriman, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United in States, delivered the albums to the president in June of 1934. Harriman later wrote to Hoyt that Roosevelt went over the pictures with care: “He desired that I express to you his great appreciation of your kindness and of his intense interest in the work you are doing.” Hoyt’s multiple lines of attack eventually paid off. In 1936, FDR signed Proclamation 2193, establishing Joshua Tree National Monument on 825,340 acres —

almost 700,000 acres larger than what Toll had recommended. But even then, Hoyt’s fight wasn’t over. Much of the land set aside for the monument was in private holdings. Hoyt then worked to get landowners such as the Pacific Coast Railway to relinquish their hold on the land. Hoyt died in December of 1945 at the age of 79. She was buried at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in the outskirts of Altadena. But still, the battle to preserve her beloved park waged on. In 1950, Congress gave in to mining interests and slashed the park’s hard-won land holdings by almost a third. That land wouldn’t be returned to the monument until 1994, when Joshua Tree officially became one of the country’s 60 national parks. It took several decades for the park to grow in popularity, but in the last few years its attendance has exploded, growing from 2.5 million visitors in 2016 to the staggering 2.8 million in 2017. Zarki can imagine how Hoyt would have responded to the headline-grabbing desecration of the park during the government shutdown, and to the industrial-scale projects being proposed and built along its edges. “We need people like her now more than ever,” he said.

FIVE EASY ROCK CLIMBING AREAS IN JOSHUA TREE NAT I O NA L PARK 56-57

Joshua Tree National Park is one of the world’s most popular climbing destinations. Thousand of cracks, slabs, and boulders, all piled across a vast desert landscape that attracts climbers from across the world. The whole park is rich with history, beauty, and rock climbing. It would take a lifetime to climb all of the routes in Joshua Tree, and just as long to sort through to find the climbs worth doing. If you’re new to Joshua Tree, I’ve put together this guide to help you find the best easy rock climb that is best for you. To keep things simple, any climb rated 5.8 or below will be considered an “easy” climb. The style of climbing in Joshua Tree may at first catch some off guard. Slabs and Cracks are de rigeur. It feels nothing like anything found at a gym, or sport climbing crag. I know this, because I was caught totally off guard by J-Tree’s smooth granite domes. I had no idea how to crack climb, and slab climbing hadn’t even entered my vocabulary. Most of my leads found me scared out of my wits, cursing whichever diety decided to put a rock here. Soon enough, I found my sea legs. These days, I think that Joshua Tree is great. Keep at it, and you might take a liking to this national park as well.

1. Double Cross Double Cross, located on Hidden Valley Campground’s Old Woman crag, is the most popular route in Joshua Tree. By far, Double Cross sees more ascents than any other line. A roadside approach, low angle, moderate grade, and bolted anchors ensures that several parties are almost always in line to give Double Cross an attempt. Despite it’s moderate grade, Double Cross shouldn’t be taken lightly. Thanks to the sheer amount of inexperienced climbers that find their way here, D.Cross sees more accidents than any other climb in Joshua Tree. The mounting number of rescues has stirred some controversy, prompting an entire thread on the safety and grading considerations needed to climb Double Cross. My two cents: Double Cross isn’t that bad. Just make sure that you have developed solid crack climbing skills, and that you are fine with it’s heady, run out start.

2. Sail Away Sitting right in the center of Real Hidden Valley, Sail Away is more than just an overplayed song by Styx. Joshua Tree climbers know it as one of the cleanest, fun moderate hand cracks in the entire park. Much like Double Cross, Sail Away always seems to have a crowd. Expect to wait in line for a chance at this

climb. This is a great route for leaders new to crack climbing. The movement, views, and rests are stellar, and any person making a tricky move is easily protected. Don’t want to wait in line? Cruise up some of the other awesome moderates nearby. Alternatively, head on over to Leaping Leaner just a few formations over.

3. Leaping Leaner Being one of the most crowded routes in J-Tree, Sail Away is not always accessible. If you don’t want to wait in line, Leaping Leaner is a solid alternative, located just a few minutes walk away. Leaping Leaner follows a left leaning hand crack to a notch on top of Locomotion Rock. The climb begins with a slabby unprotected start, before coming to a cruiser crack. Leaner is similar to

5. Dolphin

Double Cross, but without the crowds. According to lore, leaders on Leaping Leaners would begin the climb by jumping from the lip of a large boulder at the start of the climb. Those who stuck the jump would start right into the hand crack. If you missed, you suffered a nasty fall. I don’t recommend this. Do the jump on top rope instead, as my party did.

4. Toe Jam When Double Cross is crowded, Toe Jam is a great climb locatd just around the corner. Though not a pure, clean crack line, Toe Jam combines the best parts of Joshua Tree climbing into one package. Toe Jam starts up a crack, before entering right leaning flake. Lay back up a slab to the finger crack crux, and finish at a gear belay on top of the climb. Simple sounding enough, but Toe Jam gave

me a lot of trouble. For one, it was the first route that I attempted in Joshua Tree. I had no idea how to crack climb, instead attempting to face climb through the final finger crack crux. A humbling experience. Also, Toe Jam is right in the middle of the Hidden Valley Campground. You can hop out of your tent, get on Toe Jam, and get back to camp just as the coffee is pouring.

Offwidth. It’s a bad word. Even some veteran trad daddies grimace at the sound of it. Climbing wide cracks is a dirty, hopeless profession, but someone has to do it. The cursed souls that chase these beasts are only running away from something dark. Well, that’s a bit dramatic. Offwidths, I’m saying, are generally disliked by many climbers. Even the “easy” off width climbs are avoided. Dolphin, a centerpiece of Split Rocks, starts easy enough. Climbers are lulled into a false sense of security by a friendly hand crack. Don’t get too comfy. At the 40 foot mark, things begin to widen, and climbers quickly become acquainted with Dolphin’s reputation. Widening from fists, right up through squeeze chimney, Dolphin will test all of your offwidth techniques. Pro Tip: There are no good offwidth techniques. Expect to leave behind a layer of skin, but emerge with a newfound love (or hate) of offwidth climbing.