Pioneertown Mountains Preserve iNaturalist Notebook

The 25,500-acre Pioneertown Mountains Preserve descends from the high piney 7,800-foot ridges into the Pioneertown Valley. The small community of Pioneertown is surrounded by conservancy-owned volcanic mesas, the Sawtooth Mountains, and preserve lands leading to the San Bernardino National Forest. The preserve has year-round riparian corridors in Pipes Canyon and Little Morongo Canyons. It is an important landscape linkage between Joshua Tree National Park, San Bernardino National Forest, and the Big Horn Mountains Bureau of Land Management Wilderness.

In 2006, the vast majority of the Joshua trees, pinyon pines and junipers at Pioneertown Mountains Preserve were killed in a 70,000-acre lightning-caused fire of unprecedented magnitude. Today, much of the preserve is going through natural vegetation succession. Some scientists predict that fire succession and climate change will favor scrub oak and Joshua tree plant communities that may replace the pinyon forests. The fire laid bare the region’s rich geological backbone. less ↑