Home Care In Joshua Tree, CA

Reset Hotel, five minutes from Joshua Tree National Park, opened yesterday. It's the first new-build hotel in the area in 15 years.

Reset Hotel, a minimalist desert escape just outside Joshua Tree National Park's north entrance, opened on July 21 as the area's first new-build hotel in 15 years. Situated on 180 acres within the town of Twentynine Palms, the boutique hotel is the second high-profile opening in town this year.

The project is the result of the partnership between Adam Wininger and architect and product designer Ben Uyeda, who has a popular how-to YouTube series about shipping container houses. Wininger was sold on the potential of steel-frame modular construction after visiting Uyeda in the home he designed and built. The duo was also aligned on why introducing a hotel made sense in a community negatively impacted by the short-term vacation rental boom.

"We like to feel that we're helping not only people stay at the park, but it takes some pressure off the housing supply," says Wininger.

Reset features 65 guest rooms with discreet fold-down desks (but no TVs), patios, firepits, and outdoor seating. Moonlight Queen rooms—measuring 160 square feet and 320 square feet of patio space—are grouped in pairs within each modular unit. Larger 320-square-foot Mountain King Suites occupy the entire module and boast 500-square-foot patios, complete with outdoor soaking tubs. All accommodations are stocked with Flamingo Estate toiletries and Fellow pour-over coffee stations. The interiors, created in collaboration with branding and design studio Gry Space, are a study in kaleidoscopic neutrals, with rich, earthy textures against the sand and rock-strewn backdrop.

Sliding doors open up to private patios in each room, which Wininger says are "designed to be more like the outdoor living room." Stargazing is serious business out here, so guests can pick from either a dedicated platform or lie-flat daybeds.

"Once you get to Reset, you're forced into this moment of pause and to feel the surroundings," adds Whitaker.

The on-site restaurant, Split Rock Bistro, is still in the works. When it opens, it will offer all-day food and beverage service with a focus on seasonal fare of locally inspired flavors. Until then, guests can enjoy the expansive scenery from the 1,600-square-foot saltwater pool and Jacuzzi, flanked by cabanas and lounge chairs. Other wellness highlights include a five-person sauna, cold plunge, and yoga classes. The 3,000-square-foot Club House features a co-working space, a boutique, and a communal firepit.

"I don't think it's our place to overly dictate what people do. We want to create platforms and opportunities to choose your own relaxation adventure," Uyeda says.

Beyond the footprint of Reset, the hotel's grounds encompass over 100 acres of desert to explore and experience rotating art installations.

In early springtime in the Mojave Desert, Joshua trees provide one of the few foods available to many of the wildlife species in this part of the southwestern U.S. Stretching above the surrounding dry vegetation and desert soil, the tall yuccas blossom with clusters of large white flowers that beckon insects, birds, deer, cattle, ground squirrels and pack rats.

“All of them are coming and feeding there because it’s a resource that exists in a pretty bleak environment,” said Chris Smith, a plant ecologist at Willamette University who studies Joshua tree survival and genetics. The trees also provide nesting locations for birds and habitat for the California night lizard (Xantusia vigilis).

But these days, it’s the Joshua trees that need refuge. As human-caused climate change makes the deserts of the United States increasingly inhospitable and development projects threaten habitat, even desert-adapted plants such as the Joshua tree face an uncertain future. Although adult trees appear stable for now, young trees are struggling to survive. California is trying to protect one of its Joshua tree species through legislation, but without climate action, scientists and policy experts alike warn that the state may not be able to save the beleaguered plants.

Joshua trees are desert succulents with crowns of spiky green leaves that grow in the Mojave, Great Basin and Sonoran deserts of the western U.S. Joshua trees can reach more than 12 meters (40 feet) tall and can live for several hundred years. There are two species: the western Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), which lives mostly in California’s Mojave Desert, and the eastern Joshua tree (Yucca jaegeriana), which is scattered across California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, scientists predict that Joshua trees may lose up to 80% of their current habitat by century’s end. In California’s Joshua Tree National Park, only 0.02% of habitat for its namesake plant will be livable by 2100, according to research led by Lynn Sweet, a plant ecologist at the University of California, Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology.

Habitat loss is already occurring across California. “What will make a difference is if there is action on climate change,” Sweet said.

‘A forest with no young’

Although adult Joshua trees are tolerating increasingly harsh conditions, young Joshua trees are struggling to survive. They’re more sensitive to heat, drought and predation, and don’t reach sexual maturity until 50 to 70 years of age.

On the landscape, there’s something of an optical illusion: Joshua trees are plentiful in some rugged desert locations, and may continue to be into the middle of the century, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) noted when it declined to federally protect them under the Endangered Species Act. But these are what Brendan Cummings, conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, calls “zombie forests.”

Cummings explained that “even under worst-case climate scenarios, we’ll probably still have some adult Joshua trees mid-century, but we’ll have virtually no recruitment. A Joshua tree forest with no young is a zombie forest — it’s living dead. They’re live individuals, but there’s zero future for [the forest].”

Complicating matters is the fact that no one knows whether the specialized yucca moths that pollinate Joshua trees are going to survive in a changing climate. Tegeticula synthetica pollinates western Joshua trees, while T. antithetica pollinates eastern Joshua trees. The moths fertilize the plants by moving pollen between them, then lay eggs in their flowers. Their larvae chomp through some of the trees’ seeds, leaving others to grow into new plants.

Despite the threats Joshua trees face, the USFWS has repeatedly declined to protect them, saying their populations look stable through the middle of the century. The nonprofit WildEarth Guardians sued the agency after its determination in 2023.

In May 2025, U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu ruled against USFWS, writing that it’s “essential that the Service considers climate change’s effect on habitat suitability in relation to young Joshua trees, and not just the persistence of stronger, adult Joshua trees.”

It’s unclear how USFWS will respond. According to Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School and an Endangered Species Act expert, the agency could simply “check all the boxes” by quickly redoing its analysis and still conclude that Joshua trees are not at risk of extinction. Or the agency may appeal the ruling. USFWS didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment on the ruling.

Meanwhile, in California, officials are working to protect the western Joshua tree within its borders. Their plans have been contentious: Cummings said that about 40% of the stat’s western Joshua tree range is on private land. The pressure for more housing construction, combined with California’s renewable energy goals, has pitted developers against conservationists, according to CalMatters.

In 2023, California enacted the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act, which established rules for moving or trimming trees, and created the state’s Western Joshua Tree Conservation Fund.

According to Cummings, the federal ruling lends more credibility to California’s reasons for protecting its Joshua trees. He also said California’s law will be a “kick in the pants to federal agencies that the Joshua tree protection issue is not going away, and they need to vastly improve management of Joshua trees on the federal level.”

Migration is not the solution

Joshua trees won’t adapt to changing climatic conditions on their own, because they evolved under vastly different ecological conditions and can’t keep up with today’s rapid changes.

Joshua trees produce masts of seeds that once traveled across the landscape in the bellies of now-extinct giant sloths, which roamed North America until about 12,900 years ago. Today, these trees rely on antelope squirrels and other rodents to disperse their seeds, and rarely grow more than about 10 m (30 ft) from their parent plants.

Joshua trees may sometimes reproduce clonally, growing new individual plants from underground rootstocks called rhizomes. But either way, natural migration of Joshua trees to more climate-friendly regions is unlikely.

Smith, the ecologist at Willamette, said he doubts that people can save Joshua trees through assisted migrations. Moving the gangly, spiky trees would be “logistically incredibly challenging,” he said, and scientists would also have to figure out how to move their pollinators. Otherwise, relocated Joshua trees would be more like a botanical garden or a zoo, not an ecosystem, which Smith said is “not a good conservation strategy.”

Rather than trying to move trees, Smith said, California should focus on finding and protecting climate “refugia,” pockets of habitat that likely will persist even in the face of climate change, generally located at the upper elevations of current Joshua tree ranges.

But these refugia face their own dangers: development and wildfires that are fed by invasive grasses. A recent study found that wildfires are the single biggest threat to Joshua tree climate refugia, which face more than a 40% chance of igniting. Joshua trees often don’t survive blazes and struggle to regenerate or recolonize afterward. The second-biggest threat is wind and solar farms.

“The big question about whether or not Joshua trees can exist in the future is: ‘Are there places where the climate will be hospitable enough that they continue to grow?’” Smith said. “And where are those places, and can we make sure that they don’t burn up in wildfire, or we don’t build a Walmart on them, or they don’t get turned into solar fields?”

In Joshua Tree National Park, managers are trying to control invasive grass, hoping to protect refugia from future fires. But ultimately, Smith said, long-term Joshua tree conservation is bigger than California — it requires global climate action. Otherwise, he said, “I think we may kind of be fiddling while Rome burns.”

Banner image: Sunset at Joshua Tree National Park. Image courtesy of National Park Service/ Emily Hassell.

Citations:

Borchert, M. (2016). Rodent removal of fallen Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) fruits. Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences, 115(3), 146-155. doi:10.3160/0038-3872-115.3.146

Esque, T. C., Medica, P. A., Shryock, D. F., DeFalco, L. A., Webb, R. H., & Hunter, R. B. (2015). Direct and indirect effects of environmental variability on growth and survivorship of pre-reproductive Joshua trees, Yucca brevifolia Engelm. (Agavaceae). American Journal of Botany, 102(1), 85-91. doi:10.3732/ajb.1400257

Shryock, D. F., Esque, T. C., Berry, G. A., & DeFalco, L. A. (2025). Assessing uncertainty in forecasts of refugia for Joshua trees using high-density distribution data. Ecosphere, 16(6), e70308. doi:10.1002/ecs2.70308

Sweet, L. C., Green, T., Heintz, J. G., Frakes, N., Graver, N., Rangitsch, J. S., … Barrows, C. W. (2019). Congruence between future distribution models and empirical data for an iconic species at Joshua Tree National Park. Ecosphere, 10(6), e02763. doi:10.1002/ecs2.2763

The presentation began with California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham urging the commission to approve the latest draft of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan. The plan was first presented in February of 2025 with updates in April and a final draft expected to be delivered by the end of June.

The final draft presented yesterday is a 305 page document that provides guidelines and best practices for conserving the tree, The document is separate from the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act, which is the piece of legislation that sets fees for the take permits required when doing ground disturbing construction on land that contains Western Joshua Trees.

CDFW Director Chuck Bonham wanted to make one thing very clear about the plan as it stood on Thursday:

Director Bonham: “You could approve this plan today. It’s ready. But I also acknowledge you have input which says ‘more time please.'”

The plan document itself is iterative, meaning that if the California Fish and Game Commission accepts the plan, it would still be able to be worked on as conservation plans move forward. Bonham reminded the commission that a further delay into the next meeting in August could put them in the position of working on amendments to a plan that hasn’t even been implemented yet.

Director Bonham: “Even more important to all involved is a different deadline coming at you. By the time you’re in 2026, (you will) be hosting a public discussion on sufficiency and fees. Holy cow. If you think people are interested in the conservation plan, they’re definitely going to be interested in that topic.”

The potential fees for single family homeowners has become one of the biggest topics during public comment at the Fish and Game Commission meetings, as well as municipal meetings in the Town of Yucca Valley where most property owners either have Western Joshua Trees on their property or they are close enough for them to count in the auditing procedures laid out by the CDFW. Director Bonham talked about changes to the regulatory guidelines that could help reduce or even eliminate those fees.

Director Bonham: “So we’ve done at least two things at the department that I’m not sure has been broadly described to single-family property owners who may (want) to add on to their home or do some other work. First, in the revised relocation guidelines, the department has determined that projects involving a single family residence will not be required to relocate any Western Joshua Tree.

“The department is on the brink of asking a very qualified entity to produce an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the department under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) which would then be available for any single-family resident applicant to utilize, which means we could take off the table any CEQA costs for an individual single-family resident homeowner.”

Senior Environmental Specialist Drew Kaiser then presented the major changes to the Western Joshua tree conservation plan since the last iteration. One of the most notable changes is that the 50-foot distance buffer around a Western Joshua tree has been eliminated from the plan, with Kaiser noting that the decision was based on evolving conversations and ongoing research.

Despite the CDFW’s efforts to have the plan approved at Thursday’s meeting, public comment was largely in favor of delaying the approval until more details could be worked out for all interested parties. There were comments from solar construction and commercial interests, but the majority of comments at Thursday’s meeting still addressed the impact the plan could have on single-family property owners who already have homes constructed around the Western Joshua Tree.

A new deadline date of July 10th has been set for public comment to be submitted on the final draft of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan, with the possibility of the document being accepted at another meeting scheduled for August.

There are many aspects of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan that have changed since its first draft in February. Stay tuned to Z107.7 where we’ll explore what these mean for residents in the Town of Yucca Valley as well as unincorporated areas of San Bernardino County. We’ll also dive into the public comments from both residents and businesses in the coming weeks.

You can see the entire Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan at the PDF below, or visit the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website.

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(This story has been updated with new information.)

Storms moved across the desert on Tuesday afternoon, with the most serious effects felt in the high desert.

That included flooding along major roads in Twentynine Palms, including Adobe Road from Amboy Road to Condor, a main stretch leading to the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps military training base. (The city recommended taking Valle Vista to Utah Trail for those coming off the base.) Indian Trail was also closed from Adobe Road to Mesquite Springs.

"Indian Trail West of Mesquite Springs is completely under water," the city of Twentynine Palms said on its Facebook page shortly before 4:30 p.m. "Cars are getting stuck in this area, so please do not travel this road."

"Aboard the Marine Corps Base, the Ocotillo gate is closed," the city added. "The main gate is open, however due to heavy congestion, people are not able to get out. Condor gate is also closed."

To the south in the Coachella Valley, the storms were less serious. But an airport weather warning was also issued from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Palm Springs International Airport, with forecasters warning of cloud to ground lightning in the vicinity.

Earlier, the National Weather Service had predicted strong thunderstorms and potential flash flooding near Joshua Tree and farther north in the Mojave National Preserve on Tuesday, with the forecast calling for 60 mph wind gusts and “quarter size hail.”

Heavy rain was falling near Joshua Tree at 2:45 p.m., with between a quarter-inch and 0.75 inches having already fallen at that point.

A flash flood warning was also issued for northern San Bernardino County through Tuesday afternoon, with between a half-inch and 1.5 inches of rain having already fallen near Mountain Pass just before 3 p.m.

The Nipton and Ivanpah roads near the California-Nevada border are among the areas that could see significant flooding, per the weather service.

In Joshua Tree National Park, any precipitation will likely be relief to firefighters taming the Eureka Fire, which broke out May 30 and spread to 214 acres, causing some temporary road closures in the park as firefighters contained the blaze.

The Eureka Fire scorched 175 acres of Joshua Tree National Park today. While firefighters have been able to contain a portion of the blaze, full containment was not realized by nightfall on Friday.

Just before noon on Friday, a 20-acre brush fire broke out in the Covington Flats region of Joshua Tree National Park, approximately three miles northeast of Eureka Peak. The fire quickly spread to 165 acres by 1:40 PM, thanks to the 20 mph gusts of wind the national park is notorious for having during the spring and summer.

There was a joint agency response involving firefighters from the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Cal Fire, operating out of both San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Additionally, multiple air tankers were called in to drop water on the fire, according to Eric Sherwin of the San Bernardino County Fire Department.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Fire personnel will be working overnight to achieve further containment of the blaze before it has the potential to grow any further, thanks to the dry brush and Joshua trees that the national park was named after.

Not surprisingly, Joshua Tree National Park has temporary closures that will remain in effect until the fire is fully contained. Those closures include:

Those who had reservations at any of the campgrounds in the upcoming days may need to make alternative plans. However, Joshua Tree itself remains open to the public in the regions untouched by the fire.

It is recommended to check the Joshua Tree National Park website or the National Park Service's social media pages for the most up-to-the-minute details regarding the Eureka Fire and closures in Joshua Tree National Park.

Weather Does Not Appear To Be A Factor For Starting The Eureka Fire

While much of Southern California was under a weather alert for extreme heat, with some regions breaking records, weather does not appear to be a factor at this time for the start of the Eureka Fire.

The temperature reached 84F in Joshua Tree National Park at the peak of the day. However, with a sustained wind of 10 mph and gusts of 20 mph, the fire spread from 20 acres when it was first reported at 11:57 AM PST to 165 acres by 2:30 PM PST.

It was last reported at 7:00 PM PST that the fire had spread to 175 acres and was 40% contained. With temperatures expected to drop by 20 degrees overnight, the hope is that by morning, fire crews working on the blaze overnight will have achieved further containment.

No structures have been threatened or have the potential to be threatened by the blaze.