David Shaw visits Joshua Tree National Park & Mojave National Preserve

Gold mining relics and sand slides in Mojave and Joshua Tree

In January 2011, following a board meeting of Sapphire Energy in San Diego, I visited Joshua Tree national park to join in a 75^th anniversary celebration of the park’s designation as a national monument in 1936. Joshua Tree consists of nearly 800,000 acres of desert landscapes in Southern California—just a three hour drive from more than 18 million people. After its original designation as a national monument, it was elevated to a park in 1994.

Humans have occupied the Joshua Tree landscape for thousands of years. In recent history this included American cattlemen and gold miners. The park includes more than 500 archeological sites.

Nearby Mojave National Preserve occupies 1.6 million acres between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It is a place of desert solitude with vast canyons, mountain landscapes, mesas, and abandoned settlements. Kelso Dunes are the third tallest sand structures in North America, rising almost 600 feet from the desert floor. Walking on the dunes can create magical sand slides with surprising low-frequency music created by sand vibrations.

I created these videos as memoirs of the trip:

Mojave National Preserve – Video Postcard