Like Father Like Son

The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States. Named after the Mohave tribe of Native Americans, it displays typical basin and range topography.... The Mojave Desert's boundaries are generally defined by the presence of Yucca brevifolia ; considered an indicator species for this desert. The topographical boundaries include the Tehachapi together with the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges. The mountain boundaries are quite distinct since they are outlined by the two largest faults in California: the San Andreas and the Garlock. The Great Basin shrub steppe lies to the north; the warmer Sonoran Desert lies to the south and east. The desert is believed to support between 1,750 and 2,000 species of plants. While most of the Mojave desert is sparsely populated, several large cities can be found there, including Lancaster, California and Victorville, California, with the largest being Las Vegas.
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Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. Declared a U.S. National Park in 1994 when the U.S. Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act , it had previously been a U.S. National Monument since 1936. It is named for the Joshua tree forests native to the park. It... covers a land area of 790,636 acres – an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. A large part of the park, some 429,690 acres , is a designated wilderness area. Straddling the San Bernardino County/Riverside County border, the park includes parts of two deserts, each an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation: the higher Mojave Desert and lower Colorado Desert. The Little San Bernardino Mountains run through the southwest edge of the park. The higher and slightly cooler Mojave Desert is the special habitat of Yucca brevifolia, the Joshua tree for which the park is named. It occurs in patterns from dense forests to distantly spaced specimens.
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