What's in a name?

What’s in a Name?

The Area

The Joshua Tree Gateway Communities are located down Route 62 along the northern border of Joshua Tree National Park. The communities—Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Pioneertown, Homestead Valley (Landers, Johnson Valley, Flamingo Heights and Yucca Mesa), Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, and Wonder Valley—are located in the Morongo Basin, also known as the hi-desert (the unique greeting-style spelling was chosen many years ago to differentiate our high desert from the high desert of the Lancaster/Palmdale area).

Of course, some folks who are unacquainted with, or who disapprove of the grammar of the hi-desert title, refer to our area as the high desert as well. Our hi-desert is part of the Mojave Desert, while we like to think that Joshua Tree National Park starts up here in the Mojave Desert and slides its way down to the low, or Colorado Desert.

The Towns

Locals often shorten town names, so “valley” is frequently dropped from Yucca and Morongo, while never dropped from Johnson or Wonder. Joshua Tree can become “JTree,” or simply, “JT,” while Pioneertown is sometimes “Pi-town,” and Twentynine Palms becomes good old “29.” (We should note that the Marines stationed at the base in Twentynine Palms also came up with pet names for their new home, calling it “The Stumps,” or “29 Stumps.”)

The Highways

Our two highways also offer a diversity of names. Route 62, for example, also goes by the names of State Route 62, Highway 62, and Twentynine Palms Highway. Don’t worry—they’re all one and the same. And if you head north from Yucca Valley on Route 247, you’ll notice that it’s also called Highway 247, or Old Woman Springs Road, and if you drive far enough out into Johnson Valley, you’ll see the historic Old Woman Springs Ranch.

While we have no interstate freeways running through the Joshua Tree Gateway Communities, we are accessible from Interstates 10, 15, and 40, also known as “I-10,” “I-15,” or “I-40.” Sometimes you’ll hear someone just refer to them by their numbers—the 10, the 15, and the 40. The 10 runs to the south of us, the 15 and 40 are to the north. You can get here from there!

Note:

Getting around the Joshua Tree Gateway Communities is far easier, and a lot more picturesque, than navigating most urban areas. Plus, hi-desert folks are pretty friendly, so if you need directions, just stop and ask. We’ve got more visitor information centers than we do highways, after all.