Desert Queen Ranch, Twentynine Palms, San Bernardino County, CA

Significance: The Desert Queen Ranch in the Joshua Tree National Monument is an outstanding historical site of desert-based vernacular technologies displaying a range of architectural and engineering artifacts associated with the Euro-American era of settlement in the Mojave desert. The site is largely intact, with nine buildings and four ore mills still surviving. The Desert Queen Ranch was active from 1894 to 1969, during which time fifteen roofed structures and five ore mills were built on the site. / The Desert Queen Ranch illustrates responses to hostile desert conditions while testifying to a self-sufficient subsistence economy supported in part by cattle ranching, farming, and mining and ore milling. The Desert Queen Ranch, which became part of the National Park Service in 1969, is in the Mojave Desert, situated in the center of a small canyon 4,200' above sea level. Of the eight buildings constructed by William F. Keys between the 1910s and the 1950s, seven are still standing. The history of the Desert Queen Ranch is related to the beginnings of the development of cattle raising, the mining of precious metals, and the growth of cities adjacent to and including the region known today as the Joshua Tree National Monument.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N78
Survey number: HABS CA-2347