It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who with the stroke of his pen made Joshua Tree a National Monument on August 10, 1936 (it became a National Park in 1994). However, those 825,000 acres (now: 792,510 acres) would never have been recognized as worth protecting had it not been for Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, a southern belle and unlikely activist from Mississippi, who lived in Pasadena with her surgeon husband.

The tree that is not a tree

The Joshua Tree is a misnomer it is not a tree, but the largest plant in the agave family. This gawky, spiky, evergreen grows predominately in the Mojave Desert (southwest California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona). The “tree” grows a few inches a year and can easily live to at least 150 years. This plant is a rare specimen that would not exist without an almost uncanny combination of seed pollination that is dependent on one particular variety of moth, perfectly timed rains and a good cold snap.

The rock formations are unbelievable

Over 1.7 billion years ago volcanic and tectonic activity began the creation of what is now Joshua Tree National Park. A little more recently, some 100+ million years ago, granite began forming from magma (molten liquid) that cooled beneath the earth’s crust and started cracking. This stone called Monzogranite is visible after millenniums of erosion; these formations that appear to be impossible stacks of boulders are a paradise for rock climbers.