![]() city slickers eager for a simpler life - and revenue from Airbnb. Today, Joshua Tree (with a year-round population of about 7,500), nearby Pioneertown (roughly 400) and the surrounding areas are in the midst of a land-buying boom, mostly driven by creative L.A. Hawk and Mesa, a two-bedroom house by residential designer Jeremy Levine and available for rent through Homestead Modern, is set on 120 acres. Also in Joshua Tree is the Hi-Lonesome recording studio, founded by Georgia native Chris Unck. Newer to the area is musician Rocco Gardner’s creative retreat Escape, a favorite of artists including The Arctic Monkeys and Paolo Nutini. ![]() They include the famous Rancho de la Luna Studio, built in 1993 by Fred Drake and David Catching, which has hosted everyone from Queens of the Stone Age to Iggy Pop. In recent years, music producers have also flocked to the high desert, building sweeping, isolated compounds that often feel like a Mad Max summer camp. He recalls the magic of getting lost running and finding himself surrounded by ancient images by the Serrano and Chemehuevi tribes there. “There has been art in Joshua Tree a very long time,” says Hanley, noting the petroglyphs that can be found in Coyote Hole in Joshua Tree National Park. “Disruptive American iconoclastic artist Paul McCarthy bought the 200-acre of Donovan, and once filled the abandoned estate empty pool with Coca-Cola, as a performance art piece,” Hanley recalls. Most famously, there was musician Gram Parsons, who died of an overdose at the Joshua Tree Inn in 1973, only to have his cohorts burn his body in the desert. Outlaw musicians of the 1960s and ’70s from Jim Morrison to Keith Richards to Donovan also spent time in the area. UFO enthusiasts and theorists like George Van Tassel - creator of the area’s famed Integratron (a midcentury structure used today for sound baths) - also were drawn to the desert’s legendary “vibrations.” ![]() Box Office: 'The Little Mermaid' Swimming to $118M-Plus Memorial Day Debutĭespite the renegades’ best efforts, artists and iconoclasts would go on to homestead in the area, enamored by what film producer Chris Hanley ( Spring Breakers) calls the “artistic freedoms in a rural High Desert minimalist setting of aloneness.” Early Joshua Tree converts included actress Ann Magnuson and artists Andrea Zittel and Ed Ruscha.
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