High Desert Homes - Joshua Tree area

Like Big Sur, Marfa, and Taos, Joshua Tree has long been an outpost on the vagabond-hipster trail, savored by explorers looking for the wide-open, Wild West feeling of the modern-day frontier. With the Internet making it easier than ever to work—and post one’s work—from anywhere, a new set of creative urban refugees is once again flocking to the town of Joshua Tree (population 7,414) and its neighbors: Pioneertown (350), Yucca Valley (21,132), Twentynine Palms (25,768), and the unincorporated rural community of Wonder Valley—not so much to drop out as to reboot. Some come for inspiration, like L.A.-based fine art photographer Mona Kuhn, whose latest body of images—to be shown in November at Diane Rosenstein Gallery in L.A.—were shot at Acido Dorado, architect Robert Stone’s modern, gridlike house on the park’s edge. But many, like Schneider, come to stay. “Something happened to Joshua Tree,” Margo Paolucci, owner of the Joshua Tree Inn, told me: “It’s the new bohemia.”



The Paul Kaplan Group also specializes in unique homes in Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley, and Pioneer Town.