Spanning 1800 acres, The Living Desert Shows

Visitors the Deserts Abundance of Life

By Jack Kirkwood

If you have always imagined the desert to be nothing more than a wasteland of sand and sage brush totally unsuited to living things of any description, think again.  The desert is a living and breathing ecosystem of almost boundless size and shape.

If that’s not true with all the world’s deserts it is certainly true of the vast expanse of the California desert region stretching from the coastal lands and surrounding ranges to the Nevada and Arizona borders and then some.  That’s a lot of miles and a lot of desert, so bid, in fact, that General Patton’s World War II 18,000-square-mile desert training facility, the largest military training camp in history, fit nicely within its borders.

But the thought of taming some of this wild landscape to showcase its enduring strength of life and the growing things that abound across those seemingly endless stretches of sand, cactus and brush didn’t occur to anyone until 1970.  It was early that year when the idea of caring for a piece of this natural wonderland came to some very enterprising and concerned desert citizens of the Coachella Valley’s town of Palm Desert just east of Palm Springs.  That beginning idea gave the fledgling project 360 acres in the low hilly part of the valley on the southern edge of the community.

It wasn’t long before the concept caught the attention of other desert residents.  In a few short years those 360 acres became a desert miracle of dedication and ingenuity measuring many hundreds of acres and displaying more and more of the desert environment from the smallest of desert animals to the largest of the many great cactus plants.  Until today where we now have a world famous outdoor home for any of nature’s unusual creatures and displays of the desert’s equally unusual plant life.

This is The Living Desert, a non-profit enterprise and success of spectacular dimensions.

It now covers 1,800 acres, employs 140 hard-working staff backed by as many dedicated volunteers and opens its doors to the visiting public every day of the year, rain or shine, although it’s a safe bet the rain won’t happen all that often in this dry desert climate.

The Santa Rosa Mountains which protect the desert to the south are home to one of those unusual creatures.  This would be the Bighorn Sheep, a close neighbor of The Living Desert.  Close enough, in fact, that one day the big sheep stopped by for a look from up on a rocky crag that frames the huge development’s east side.  Not wanting to turn away a four-footed visitor of any description, the park now has that rocky crag within its boundaries and the Bighorn Sheep as one of its best known and most stately inhabitants.

Not to be outdone by nature’s wonders, the community’s enterprising railroad buff have built a model railroading display that rivals any creation of this favorite of grown men and boys anywhere in the country.  As visitors enter the park compound a prompt right turn down the walk toward the Bighorn Sheep and his hillside friends, they suddenly come to this railroading masterpiece in miniature with its nearly one mile of track and like-like trains running every which way through equally life-like terrain features and communities.  The kids love the action.  And as the day ends and the experience has been complete and fulfilling, so do the adults.