Journal of Alta California

Featuring great stories, in-depth reporting, beautiful photography, smart thinking — Alta is the magazine and website that bring you everything California.

CONTRIBUTORS

Journal of Alta California

The Call of the Desert

Hubris in Art Form • Land artists insist on making their mark on the ancestral grounds of Indigenous people.

PHOTO SHOOTS • THE DESERT’S MOST ICONIC POP CULTURE MOMENTS

High Desert Handbook

‘This Place Belongs to You’ • Joshua Tree National Park is synonymous with the desert. Yet record numbers of guests threaten to overwhelm its beauty, wildlife, and small staff.

The Desert Tortoise Defender

An Ode to Desert Oracle • The brief history of “a pocket-sized field guide to the fascinating American deserts: strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros!”—and its imminent return.

The Joy of a Great Desert Biker Bar • Six spots across Southern California to go hog wild—and get some delicious food, too.

MUSIC VIDEOS • THE DESERT’S MOST ICONIC POP CULTURE MOMENTS

A Company Town Comes Back to Life

The Cactus with 12 Arms • Dozens of people have been killed searching for the Lost Dutchman Mine in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains. At 93, Clay Worst is the last living connection to those who claimed to know its location.

Oasis, California

Living with Death Valley • Climate is making a place of extremes feel a lot more normal.

TV SHOWS • THE DESERT’S MOST ICONIC POP CULTURE MOMENTS

Proving Grounds • The desert holds its secrets—which is why it’s been an ideal place to test out what’s next.

Pottery as Cultural Survival • Tony Soares is reviving a lost Mojave Desert Indigenous art form.

Soaking Up Some Wisdom • In the middle and feeling a little spent, a writer relates all too well to Desert Hot Springs.

MOVIES • THE DESERT’S MOST ICONIC POP CULTURE MOMENTS

The Drought • A road trip along the diminished Colorado River reveals the hot, dry, and terribly inevitable future of the western United States.

WINTER 2023 SELECTIONS

Yes, It’s Worth It • Doug Peacock’s writing and love of the wild continue to inspire the radical environmental movement.

Mike Henderson’s Personal Renaissance • Now late in his career, the Bay Area artist is seeing his paintings praised as much for their craft and creativity as for their social critique and cultural representations.

WHY THIS ART • Traveling Through Time with Monet’s The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light

TAKE THAT, GUGGENHEIM! • Architect Thom Mayne’s new home for the Orange County Museum of Art is a head spinning force of nature.

Teach Your Children to Remain Small and Invisible

Jimmy

Making Gun Violence Everyone’s Problem