Reconnecting Indigenous people to a sacred site
A mile-long stand of native palm trees grows here along springs and a pond formed by an earthquake fault. On the west side of the oasis is the 29 Palms Inn, run by the same family since the 1920s; on the east side is the headquarters of Joshua Tree National Park. The oasis (shown in the painting by Chuck Caplinger) was long occupied by Serrano; they were joined by Chemehuevi in 1867. Under pressure from non-Indian settlers, both left by 1913.
In the early 2000s, the Inn was owned and managed by Jane Johansing Grunt Smith, a descendant of its founders, and her husband Paul Francis Smith, an attorney. Paul was appointed to represent innkeepers on a federal desert advisory committee and noticed Indigenous people weren’t at the table. In 2003 he invited the federal land management agencies to meet with tribal leaders on the grounds of the Inn at the oasis, a sacred site for the tribes. Then in 2016 Paul’s sister Pat Flanagan, a biologist and conservationist, facilitated a Gathering of the Tribes at the Inn as part of the Centennial of the National Park Service. The Gatherings are expected to continue.
[Painting copyright 2024 Chuck Caplinger https://desertartstudio.com/ Used by permission]
About the series
In this series we tell true stories about places we call Points of Inspiration that can serve as beacons to inspire people to do whatever they can for greater justice and sustainability. The inspiration can take many forms and isn’t always obvious.
The Oasis of Mara story is about human rights. So is an account of the writer Mary Austin (The Land of Little Rain, 1903) never forgetting how people were mistreated in the towns where she lived in the Owens Valley — women, Indians, immigrants, miners — and using the fame she gained as an author to press for human rights in books, articles, and public lectures.
And so is John Steinbeck writing a powerful story (The Grapes of Wrath, 1939) about the neglect and abuse of dust bowl migrants because he wanted to put a “tag of shame” on those responsible. His bestselling novel and the award-winning film based on it changed attitudes and led to reform.
Joshua Tree National Park: How it was created
And she had perseverance, too
Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, almost always described as a “socialite from South Pasadena,” convinced President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 to create a national monument that eventually became Joshua Tree National Park. She is pictured here in a mural at park headquarters.
The 794,000-acre park protects a mountainous transition zone between the Mojave and Sonoran deserts that includes extensive stands of western Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), oases of native palms (Washingtonia filifera), immense boulder formations, and petroglyphs and other evidence of long occupancy by Indigenous people. It has over three million visits a year.
Minerva Hamilton came from an upper-class Mississippi plantation background. She married a wealthy doctor from New York, Sherman Hoyt, and in 1897 they moved to South Pasadena, a separate city which then had fewer than a thousand residents. The 5,000-square-foot house they built in 1901 is still there. Minerva immersed herself in Southern California high society and civic causes including the founding of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
She became fascinated with desert plants through gardening and on trips to the California deserts where she saw widespread destruction of Joshua trees and cacti. She organized exhibits of desert plants on the East Coast and in Europe; for a garden show in New York City, she had seven railroad cars of rocks, plants, and sand shipped across the country.
When she decided to focus her energy on creating a large national park in the Little San Bernardino Mountains, she was introduced to President Roosevelt, and FDR’s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes became an ally. She lobbied them and sent them albums of photos taken by Stephen H. Willard, an accomplished photographer and painter who had a winter studio in Palm Springs and a summer one in Mammoth Lakes.
Minerva Hamilton Hoyt had social standing, resources, skills, and contacts. She had perseverance, too, and didn’t give up until she saw success.
