Author Archives: mgaymerjones

Australian artist Andrew Rogers’ Earthworks geoglyphs are scattered around the globe. This design, probably his most famous. Location just a few miles north of Yucca Valley.

You already know about these dinosaurs, but it’d be weird to have this list without putting them on it. So, here you go. Dinosaurs. Location Just off the 10 about 15 miles before you hit Palm Springs.

More than a hundred of Ricardo Breceda’s intricate metal sculptures of prehistoric animals, fantasy creatures, insects, and a guy in a jeep are scattered across tenish square miles of desert. Location 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Here’s the story of Elmer Long’s Bottle Tree Ranch: There was a guy named Elmer Long. Starting when he was a kid, he and his dad would collect old bottles from trash dumps in the desert. When he was 55 … Read More

This giant mound of hay bales and mud painted over with cheery Christian platitudes was constructed by Leonard Knight after his failed decade-and-a-half long quest to sew a “God Is Love” hot air balloon and fly it across the country. … Read More

One man’s giant hole in the ground is another man’s art. Heizer’s two massive trenches in a Nevada mesa stretch about as long as the Empire State Building is tall. They’re not as clean cut as they were when he … Read More

Seven 30-foot tall stacks of fluorescent boulders constructed by New York-based artist Ugo Rondinone. The work is a symbol of human presence in the wilderness, a mirroring of the piled rocks that hikers, Girl Scouts, Luke Skywalker, and prehistoric hunter … Read More

In the ’50s, a guy known as the Desert Pastor hired Inglewood sculptor Frank Antone Martin to put up some Jesus statues out by Yucca Valley. The steel-reinforced plaster sculptures depict Jesus doing typical Jesus things like eating the Last … Read More

In the 1940s, Hollywood investors including Roy Rogers and Gene Autry recreated an 1870s frontier town in the high desert that would be used as a set for dozens of movies in the ’40s and ’50s. Now it’s a tourist … Read More

At Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology, this is a piece of the Bay Area in the desert—literally. One-hundred years after the birth of musician Lou Harrison, his birthday was celebrated with a 24-hour party and the dedication of a … Read More