| to Interstate 10, seven
miles away, where he flagged down help.
Joshua Tree National Monument
Number of acres: 559,950
Number of visitors in 1993:
1,256,928
Number of law-enforcement officers: 14 permanent, 3
seasonal
Percentage increase in law-enforcement activity over last ten
years: 577
Number of Satanic rock rings found by one backcountry
volunteer since 1990: 50
Reported acts of vandalism in 1993: 54
Average
cost of cleaning up one act of vandalism: $151.17
1994 budget:
$2,775,381
Law-enforcement budget: $559,400
Joshua
Tree, where high desert (the Mojave) meets low desert (the Colorado), where
cattle rustlers hid theft herds and gold miners punched holes in the ground
seeking theft fortune, has been wild and woolly for a long time. Today the area
is besieged by yet another sort of fringe element. As retired San Bernardino
sheriffs sergeant Brian English, who worked the area for 20 years, puts it: "I
can tell you there are more weirdos per square inch in Joshua Tree, Twentynine
Palms, and Yucca Valley than anywhere else. More child molesters too, because
of the remoteness." Rangers here have theft hands full with a regular witches'
brew of troublemakers, including rowdy marines from the base in Twentynine
Palms, practicing Satanists, amateur arsonists, grave robbers, and combinations
thereof.
When they're not busy running down sociopathic soldiers or
performing any number of mundane duties like dousing illegal campfires, Joshua
Tree rangers update the park's three-inch-thick "weird file", a file filled
with photos and descriptions, from the amusing to the eerie, of unsolved
mysteries - such as the 12-foot pentagram decorated with bird wings that ranger
Nina Burnell found etched in the sand in may 1993. Why Joshua Tree? Gary
Garrett, a longtime backcountry volunteer at the park, ventures a guess:
"There's an unwritten acceptance that Joshua Tree has energy centers,
though |
I've never felt them
myself. Also, it is convenient to Southern California."
Hidden Valley
picnic area, where in 1992 a young girl and her brother found a booby-trap
simulator - a military device with the explosive power of a quarter-stick of
dynamite - while playing in the bushes. The device blew up, igniting the girl's
clothes. Within the next four weeks four more booby-trap simulators were found
in the underbrush, where rangers speculate they were stashed by marines.
Lost Horse Ranger District, where last January rangers discovered that
someone had dug up and disheveled the grave of Johnny Lang, a prominent
prospector who died on a supply run in 1926. Sifting through the pile of dirt
and bones left by the vandals, archaeologists found the only thing missing was
Lang's skull.
Indian Cove Campground, a perennial trouble spot where,
during one notorious week in 1992, two people were arrested for collecting 66
cacti, four people were arrested and charged with burning six picnic tables, a
county hostage-negotiation team was called in to help catch a man tripping on
LSD and mushrooms and screaming for rangers to shoot him, a successful
five-hour search was concluded for a lost and inebriated college fraternity
member, six marines were arrested for being under the influence of alcohol and
attempting to assault a woman with a burning stick, and a second person was
arrested for drug use - the 97th such arrest that year at Indian Cove
alone.
On September 19, 1973, a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol
killed musician Gram Parsons, formerly of The Byrds and The Flying Burnto
Brothers, in Twentynine Palms, a mile outside the national monument. While
awaiting transport at the Los Angeles airport, the coffin containing his
remains was stolen; a day later, at a turnout near Cap Rock, a maintenance
worker at Joshua Tree came upon Parson's flaming corpse, which burned a stain
into the ground that remained visible for two full years. Two friends of
Parsons later pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor theft and received 30-day
suspended sentences. For some time afterward, groupies would visit the spot
with spoons to try to scoop up souvenirs; nowadays, the occasional fan still
places flowers on the spot. |