Spring of sweet water and very cold/ 29 Palms on Colorado Desert between top of Morongo Pass and Virginia Dale Mine

1889

The Oasis of Mara (spelled Maara’ by the Serrano, its first residents) at park headquarters in Twentynine Palms, is one of five oases in the park. It marks the northernmost limits of naturally occurring California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera) oases in the country.

The fan palm, which can live up to 200 years, is the only palm native to the western United States. With their permanent water sources, palm oases have been hubs of human and biological activity for millennia.

This historic photograph depicts a Southern Pacific Railroad survey party camped among healthy palms. Today, geological processes, human use, and climate shifts have diminished the water available to the oasis, and water no longer pools naturally as the notation indicates it once did.

A series of historic photographs, including this image, is helping park management and park's associated tribal communities determine options on how to maintain this stand of palms and associated plant community.

Albumen print on cardboard. H 21.5, W 13 cm
Joshua Tree National Park, JOTR 8921