By Ruthie Brownfield
Just north of Palm Springs and on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, the town of Joshua Tree is a tiny outpost (population: 7,500) in the high desert of the Mojave. Isolated, rugged and brutally hot during the summer, it’s not the type of place you’d think would be so attractive to artists and eccentrics, yet it is. They’ve stamped the place with funky found art and authentic New York pizza.
It’s also a good place to disappear to. You can buy a cheap plot of land and camp out with your friends in whatever makeshift dwelling you can get your hands on.
Los Angeles–based photographer Ruthie Brownfield took her camera lens to Joshua Tree to capture the physical beauty and the human characters who are drawn to this austere desert landscape.
Joshua Tree feels like a place with no rules.
It’s an eccentric place — it’s not for conventional people.
Airstreams are a common sight in Joshua Tree. There are a lot of what you might call “alternative living situations.”
Down the road from the Airstreams is this little shell of a house.
Inside the abandoned house, these newspapers were all that was left. The waste tells its own story, revealing traces of the past.
There’s also a little bit of an outlaw element to it.
A local family of restauranteurs runs the Wonder Valley Music Festival each year in nearby 29 Palms. It’s a Mos-Eisley-Cantina-meets-BoHo-Cafe vibe. It’s in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sagebrush.
One of the bands from the Wonder Valley Music Festival poses for a picture.
“This man introduced himself as Jimmy,” photographer Brownfield notes. “He is from Nebraska and first experienced Joshua Tree during his military days. He fell in love with the area and recently moved back there to retire.”
In Landers, near Joshua Tree, this photo was taken in a small 1960s cabin that was for sale. It’s tiny and uninsulated, but the views can’t be beat.
In the back of the place that Brownfield rented, somebody had turned this shed into an outdoor bedroom. “Much of the housing situations there were very makeshift,” she adds. “Halfway between camping and housing.”
The high desert gets colder at night than the Mojave does, which is at sea level. Summers can still be pretty brutal, but it’s more temperate than Palm Springs to the south.
The town’s namesake, the Joshua Tree plant, can take 60 years to mature and take decades to grow its first arm. Supposedly, they can live for 500 years or more.
