In 1994, a committee of shopkeepers in one California desert town read about a Canadian mural project featured in a Smithsonian exhibition, decided the same trick might rescue their own main street, and got to work. By 2014 they had commissioned 26 of them.
Twentynine Palms spreads across the southern Mojave at the north entrance to Joshua Tree National Park, the most affordable town in California at the park's gates, with rent averaging $1,352 per month. The setup is hard to beat: park headquarters and the Oasis Visitor Center sit inside city limits, so you're not driving to the park so much as living at its front desk.
This place predates the homesteads that built it. The Oasis of Mara, right in town, has been a water source for more than 9,000 years, and the 29 palms that gave the place its name were planted there by the Serrano. Colonel Henry Washington, a desert surveyor, made the first recorded visit in 1855 and found Chemehuevi families living in the surrounding hills.
No stop on our basecamp price map gets a quieter gate. Locals will tell you fewer cars queue at the north entrance than at the west entrance, which, in a park drawing close to three million visitors a year, is worth more than the rent savings.
What to Expect Visiting Twentynine Palms, California
Walk the murals first. They're scattered across storefronts, schools, and inns, painting the town's homesteading history alongside the plants and animals of the Mojave, and brochures are free at the visitor center. Mural 26 marks the 20th anniversary of both Joshua Tree National Park and the California Desert Protection Act, which is a very Twentynine Palms thing to commemorate in paint.
The town is otherwise stranger and better than its size suggests. Smith's Ranch still operates as a drive-in movie theater, Theatre 29 stages community productions, and Sky's The Limit Observatory offers an outdoor telescope setup and a walkable scale model of the solar system. The 29 Palms Historical Society Museum and the Old Schoolhouse Museum handle the archives.
Then there's the base. The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center on the edge of town is the largest Marine Corps training base in the world, and it shapes the place: military families, artists, and desert solitude-seekers sharing the same grocery store.
Inside the park, the 39-mile Park Boulevard runs a semi-loop from the north entrance over to the west, hitting Skull Rock and Arch Rock along the way, and takes a couple of unhurried hours. If you'd rather walk, the hike to a hidden oasis climbs over 600 feet across three-plus miles to a stand of fan palms fed by underground springs.
Plan Your Visit
Twentynine Palms sits on Highway 62 east of Los Angeles and northeast of Palm Springs. It grew as a homesteading community in the 1920s and only incorporated on November 23, 1987, which explains why the street grid feels improvised in the best way.
Joshua Tree covers 795,156 acres and is open 24 hours a day, every day, though entrance stations aren't always staffed. Admission runs $30 per vehicle for seven days. The park was declared a national monument on August 10, 1936, and redesignated a national park on October 31, 1994. Come between fall and spring, because summer heat out here is genuinely dangerous, and bring more water than you think you need.
Frequently Asked Questions
Public art and the Marine Corps. Two dozen commissioned outdoor murals earned it the nickname "the city of murals," and the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center on its edge is the largest such training base anywhere.
It's at the boundary. The park's north entrance, headquarters, and Oasis Visitor Center all sit within the city, making it the shortest commute to any park in this series.
Generally yes. Visitors report shorter queues there than at the west entrance near Joshua Tree Village, which matters in a park that logs nearly three million recreational visits a year.
Methodology: The editorial experts at Only In Your State identified a leading National Park Service destination in each state, then used data from data.census.gov to determine the most affordable nearby town by median gross rent.