‘Enchanted Land’
Thanks to a Pasadena socialite, Joshua Tree National Park has become a tourist hotspot
By Tracy Spicer 02/15/2007
Though it’s situated only 140 miles east of Los Angeles, Joshua Tree National Park feels like a different world, where you’ll find hills of bare rock rather than high-rise buildings; Joshua trees scattered throughout the flatland rather than flashy sports cars saturating freeways. Attracting roughly 1.5 million visitors each year, the park is internationally recognized as an outdoor lover’s paradise, as well as a tranquil, spiritual destination.
As Deanne Stillman writes in “Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango,” the peaceful terrain provided solace for Pasadena socialite Minerva Hoyt — long before the park was peppered with tourists and rock-climbers; long before the tree was referenced by the celebrated Grammy Award-winning album that catapulted U2 into stardom.
Hoyt, who grew up in Mississippi, ultimately moved to California with her husband, Dr. Sherman Hoyt. She used her affluent status to organize charitable events and quickly became a key mover-and-shaker in Pasadena. Meanwhile, the West Coast introduced Hoyt, an avid gardener, to the California desert.
“She’s one of the people who founded the Rose Parade; she liked thorny things,” Stillman said. “Her passion was the flora and fauna of the desert, in particular the Joshua tree. She started lobbying to protect that part of Southern California.”
The desert became Hoyt’s primary spiritual refuge after the deaths of her son and husband. Stillman describes Hoyt as “pretty independent,” often traveling to the desert on horse or buckboard, where she would sleep in the open among the Joshua trees, accompanied only by her maid.
According to Stillman, Hoyt noticed unchecked plundering taking place throughout the area due to a “cactus craze,” an international peak in interest in desert plants and the American west.
She decided to share her passion by setting up exhibitions of desert plant life, which were successfully showcased in Boston, New York and London. She also organized the International Deserts Conservation League, which fought to establish parks to preserve desert areas.
Stillman writes that although Hoyt campaigned relentlessly to save the “enchanted land,” she faced many struggles and nearly ran out of money to support her cause. But her perseverance paid off in August 1936, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created Joshua Tree National Monument, preserving 825,340 acres of the area, and Hoyt was christened the “Apostle of the Cacti.” Hoyt’s desert vision came to full fruition in 1994 when the area was upgraded to National Park status.
Like Hoyt, Stillman finds refuge at the park, as well as a personal connection with Joshua trees, which made “Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango” a true passion project.
“It’s my spiritual home,” Stillman said. “I grew up in Ohio, and I was never interested in ice fishing, so I never felt at home there,” Stillman said. “I had been dreaming about the desert, in particular the Joshua tree itself, the plant, before I knew what it was. It was implanted in my own personal consciousness.”
Stillman incorporates her beloved desert in many of her works, including her bestselling book “Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave,” as well as articles and columns in the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone and the Village Voice. For “Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango,” Stillman intertwined her years of exploration and personal experiences in the area with historical research and locals’ stories.
The book also enabled Stillman to stress an important message about the significance of national parks, which she believes are “under siege,” and to address two current threats the park faces: proposals for a prison and a landfill nearby.
“Is that what we want to go on next to our national parks?” Stillman asked. “Why do we regard the desert as a place to dump people and to dump garbage?”
Though Stillman said some locals do support the proposals for their economic boost, she and others believe those additions will destroy the desert experience.
“We all have one place that resonates for us,” Stillman explained. “[Joshua Tree National Park] is my personal tuning fork. Some people just don’t get it; they’re clueless about the desert. But they don’t know what they’re missing.”
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