Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park is a desert park in southern California where two deserts meet: the higher Mojave across the north and the lower Colorado Desert in the south and east. It covers 792,510 acres of granite boulders and Joshua trees, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles. A national monument from 1936, it became a national park in 1994, and in 2025 it had 2,932,644 recreation visits, the most in March.

The park has no lodging, no food and no fuel inside, so a visit is planned around the entrances, the heat and what you carry in. Every figure below is from the Park Service's own pages, checked on 26 October 2026.

Does the non-resident surcharge apply at the entrance stations?

Joshua Tree costs a visitor from abroad $30 per car for seven days, exactly what a US resident pays. It is not one of the eleven national parks that add a $100 surcharge per person for visitors who live outside the United States. Two adults from abroad in one car therefore pay $30.

A motorcycle pays $25, and someone on foot or on a bike $15; children under 16 pay nothing. The $250 non-resident America the Beautiful pass covers the park too. The North and West entrance stations take debit and credit cards only, while the visitor centres also take cash. A pass is needed even to drive straight through. Our guide to national park fees for international visitors explains when the pass is worth buying.

Which entrance, West, North or South, should you use?

Joshua Tree has three entrances, and the one to use depends on where you sleep. The park is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, with no reservation to enter.

• West Entrance: five miles south of Highway 62 at the village of Joshua Tree, and the closest to the boulders and the Joshua trees.
• North Entrance: in Twentynine Palms, three miles south of Highway 62, by the park headquarters.
• South Entrance: near Cottonwood Spring, off Interstate 10, 25 miles east of Indio.

Park Boulevard runs between the West and North entrances, about 45 minutes apart, and Pinto Basin Road runs south from it to Interstate 10. From the West Entrance to the South Entrance takes about an hour and a half. The park warns against relying on GPS to find your way.

What are Joshua trees, and where do they grow?

A Joshua tree is a yucca, Yucca brevifolia, a plant of the agave family rather than a true tree, and the Park Service calls it the sign that you are in the Mojave Desert. In the park it grows between 2,800 and 5,800 feet, along Park Boulevard and Keys View Road in the northwest, and the Park Service counts about 870,000 of them.

Most Joshua trees top out at around 40 feet, and the average one lives around 150 years. They flower from about mid-February to April, pollinated only by the yucca moth. The low south of the park, around Cottonwood, has few of them. Attaching a hammock or a slackline to Joshua trees is prohibited.

Which short walks, from Hidden Valley to Ryan Mountain, fit a first visit?

The best first walks in Joshua Tree are short loops beside the main road, most of them an hour or less. Distances are round trip, from the Park Service.

Keys View looks south over the San Andreas Fault to Mount San Jacinto and the Salton Sea, and is crowded at sunset. Barker Dam has rock art seen from a distance and bighorn sheep nearby. Ryan Mountain is the most popular summit, and the park advises against climbing it in the summer heat.

The cholla are called jumping cholla because segments stick to anyone who brushes past, so wear closed shoes and carry tweezers. The park is also a climbing area, with more than 8,000 routes and 2,000 boulder problems. The Park Service does not inspect or maintain the bolts.

Two trails are partly closed on 26 October 2026: part of the West Side Loop near Black Rock until an estimated early November, and the Oasis of Mara trail beyond the oasis after flooding.

When do summer highs at Twentynine Palms make hiking unsafe?

Joshua Tree is too hot to hike in the middle of the day from June to September, when highs pass 100°F. The Park Service advises starting before 9 or 10 a.m. or after 4 or 5 p.m. in summer, and avoiding trails longer than two miles. October to May is the season it recommends.

The table gives NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals for Twentynine Palms, by the North Entrance, at 1,975 feet. The campgrounds sit 1,000 to 2,400 feet higher and run cooler. Twentynine Palms averages 89 days a year at or above 100°F. Flash floods are most common from July to October.

Why is there no water or fuel past the entrance stations?

Water and fuel are missing inside Joshua Tree: there is no water in its interior and no petrol station, restaurant, shop or hotel anywhere inside. Water comes only from a few points on the edges: the West Entrance, the Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center, Black Rock and the Cottonwood campground among them. The park asks for at least a gallon of water per person per day.

Phone signal is very limited and missing in many areas, and rideshare cars should not be relied on to come in. Download the park's app with its offline maps before entering. If a car breaks down, stay with it until help arrives.

Which of the nine campgrounds take reservations, and which fill by Friday?

Five of Joshua Tree's nine campgrounds take reservations. Together the nine hold about 500 sites, and with no lodging at all in the park, a night inside means a tent or a van. Bookings run from the same day to six months ahead, on Recreation.gov: Black Rock, Cottonwood and Indian Cove at $35 a night, and Jumbo Rocks and Ryan at $30.

Hidden Valley, Belle and White Tank are first-come, first-served at $25, paid by card at an entrance station within an hour. They are full nearly every weekend from September to May, usually by Friday afternoon. Only Black Rock and Cottonwood have water, no campground has showers, and sleeping in a car outside a campground is illegal.

Outside the park, Joshua Tree village, Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms on Highway 62 have private campgrounds and RV parks, and the Park Service says they too fill on weekends from October to May.

Which roads and car parks are darkest for stargazing?

The darkest skies in Joshua Tree are along Pinto Basin Road between the Cholla Cactus Garden and Cottonwood, and Cottonwood is the darkest campground. The park has been an International Dark Sky Park at the Silver Tier since 2017. Its glow comes mainly from Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Coachella Valley.

The park names four car parks for stargazing: Quail Springs, Hidden Valley, Cap Rock and Ryan Mountain. Stay awake and within 20 feet of the car there. The Milky Way's core is best in summer, when the nights are warm.

How far is Joshua Tree from Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Las Vegas?

Joshua Tree is about 140 miles east of Los Angeles and 215 miles southwest of Las Vegas, by the Park Service's figures. The nearest airport is at Palm Springs, about 38 miles and under an hour by road from the Joshua Tree Visitor Center, on our own routing.

The park is one of the two desert national parks in our guide to California, with Death Valley National Park to the north. The Yosemite National Park guide covers the Sierra Nevada. The other national parks in California are Channel Islands National Park, Death Valley National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pinnacles National Park, Redwood National and State Parks, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Yosemite National Park.