Dispatch #43 - Chuckwalla National Monument Part 2
I have spent a lot of time wandering this small patch of land over the years, learning its contours both on foot and on the map. Its shape is an imperfect circle, 9.6 miles in circumference, enclosing roughly 3,382 acres of rocky ridges, sandy washes, and hidden oases centered around Corn Springs, a loop of green where trees, shrubs, cacti, and wildflowers hold their ground against the desert.
The dark yellow marks BLM land designated as Wilderness, the highest level of protection we have for land in the United States. The aqua square is California State Lands. The small gray parcels are privately owned, held by miners who laid claims here long ago.
And that light patch of yellow where I’ve been roaming, the area roughly encircled in red on the map, was BLM land without formal protections.
That changed with the creation of Chuckwalla National Monument. More than 624,270 acres in California’s southeast corner now carry a shared name and a shared protection, bringing together long-designated Wilderness with 375,747 acres of previously unprotected BLM land.
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Dispatch #42 - Chuckwalla National Monument Part 1
One of the first treks I made onto BLM land was to a place called the Mecca Hills Wilderness, largely because the agency website promised hiking trails (back in 2020, I was new to the world of BLM lands, and trails were my gateway drug). I saw photographs of ladders in a place called Painted Canyon and was instantly hooked.
I’ve been returning ever since.
The Mecca Hills Wilderness sits inside the western edge of the Chuckwalla National Monument, near the end of its witch-like pointed finger. This is Wilderness with a capital W — 26,242 acres designated under the landmark California Desert Protection Act of 1994.
After more than fifty revisions between 1986 and its passage, the bill moved through the Senate by a 68–23 margin and permanently reshaped the conservation landscape of the California desert. It created Death Valley and Joshua Tree as national parks, established the Mojave National Preserve, and designated sixty-nine new wilderness areas, including Mecca Hills…
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