Joshua Tree National Park in California, a common side trip for Route 66 travelers, will shut down today because of damage to the park and will remain closed until the government shutdown ends.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Without rangers on hand, visitors created new roads by driving off pavement and defaced the park’s namesake Joshua trees, a park spokesman said Tuesday.
“The way it looks right now because of resources or lack thereof, we have about eight rangers that oversee a large park, we will remain closed until appropriations are put into place to reopen,” spokesman George Land said Tuesday. […]
Earlier during the shutdown, the park’s toilets and trash barrels overflowed, prompting many volunteers to step up and try to help clean the park.
USA Today reported on the impending Joshua Tree closure:
Breanne Dusastre, director of marketing and tourism development for Visit 29! Tourism Group, coordinated a group of volunteers to stock and clean bathrooms throughout the park on New Year’s Day. Dusastre said that keeping the parks clean and open is good is critical for the local economy, but secondary to the long-term health of the park’s natural resources.
“The closure is going to make things really difficult for our small businesses,” Dusastre said. “But this is the best decision for the park. National parks are national treasures and we need to make sure we protect these resources for visitors in five years and 50 years to come out and enjoy them.”
Joshua Tree National Park lies less than an hour’s drive south of Route 66 from Amboy, California. If you’d planned to visit in the coming days, here’s what you’d be missing:
Numerous other national parks closed at the start of the shutdown, now in its third week, and parts of other parks closed in recent days because of human waste and trash.
Joshua Tree, which encompasses nearly 800,000 acres east of Los Angeles, became a national park in 1994 but originally was designated a national monument in 1936.
(Image of Joshua Tree National Park in California by James Marvin Phelps via Flickr)
“Without rangers on hand, visitors created new roads by driving off pavement and defaced the park’s namesake Joshua trees”. Yet I bet these same people demand the “right to bear arms” – to protect themselves from (other) criminals! And, of course, the right to drive potentially lethal lumps of steel wherever they want to – or can get away with. Just a few days of no park rangers, and they go feral. Lord of the Flies anyone?
Two comments come to mind about the closing of Joshua Tree National Park. The first is to scold people who must have their way when things don’t turn out like they feel it should be. They put paved roads in the park for people to use not as a suggestion of where you should drive. If you can’t drive on the paved roads turn around and leave.
The second item that I think is a sign of the attitude of a lot of people now days is I can throw my trash anywhere I want especially if the trash can is full. Look people, you brought the food or items you feel you need to get rid of so take you trash home with you or at least to some place that is not over flowing.
Over flowing toilets my only suggestion is when you see the park is closed you shouldn’t expect that the toilets will be serviced.
Remember you don’t the park, you are only a visitor so quit trashing it!
That last comment should be you don’t own the park, you are only a visitor so quit trashing it!
Is the park free to enter, or is there an entry charge? When things are free to use (I know the taxpayer pays for the rangers, etc) at the time of use, then there is this “so what?” attitude. It happens in the UK with the National Health Service – free at point of use. And mis-use!
God, the people who did this need to be thrown into the intake pipe of a hydroelectric generator.
The same sort of people who see a disused building and smash its windows or set it on fire.