Grow in a small swath of the Mojave Desert
In 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a proclamation designating 794,000-acres of what is now Joshua Tree National Park — an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island — a national monument. It became a national park in 1994.
Joshua tree is the common name for the Yucca brevifolia, which only grow in a small swath of the Mojave Desert, from southwest Utah, southern Nevada and western Arizona and into southeastern California, in elevations from about 1,300 to 5,900 feet above sea level.
Mormon pioneers encountered the species in the mid-1800s and named it after the Biblical story of Joshua, who raised his hands to the sky in prayer.
Most of the first European settlers, however, saw the desert as a wasteland. Others, like Minerva Hoyt, a South Pasadena socialite and amateur gardener, found solace and renewed health in the clean air, and beauty in its austere landscape.
Before Roosevelt established the national monument in 1936, there was a suggestion that it be named after Hoyt, who lobbied for more than 20 years to create a protected desert park. But because the policy didn’t allow for parks or monuments to be named after living people, Joshua Tree National Monument was chosen to honor the park’s most unique inhabitant.
Long an inspiration for artists, Joshua Tree was rediscovered in the 1960s and ’70s by the rock ‘n’ roll community, including Keith Richards, the Eagles and Gram Parsons.