Joshua Trees

Chris Clarke is a photographer and nature conservationist who runs a very nice blog featuring some of his photographs and some of his thoughts about the Mojave Desert.  Since I'm always amazed that people can find beauty in what all too often seems a wasteland to me, I get a great deal of enjoyment out of his Coyote Crossing blog, and it serves as a reminder to me to look for beauty even here in the land of tumbleweeds and sandstorms.

So Clarke took on a challenge to find early photographs of a particular stretch of desert called Centennial Flat.  Unless I miss my guess, this is somewhere in the northwestern portion of Death Valley National Park.  Clarke found some old photographs taken in 1926 at Centennial Flat, and then found a rather more famous one in a surprising place, at coordinates 36.331 North, 117.745 East.  Enjoy.