Keys Ranch at Joshua Tree National Park offers visitors a chance to step back into time and see how homesteaders forged a life in San Bernardino County’s high desert.
Surrounded by a canyon of sharp cliffs and large boulders, I gaze over at the worn, sun-baked wooden buildings, more like shacks now, that make up Keys Ranch. I have just walked back into time, a century ago to when Bill Keys homesteaded a life in a seemingly forsaken desert. The ranch is now part of Joshua Tree National Park.
Today I’m listening to National Park Service Ranger Pam Tripp tell me and about 20 other park visitors the amazing story of a man and a family that for 60 years built something out of virtually nothing, a story of survival where many others had failed, a tale of spirit, hard work and independent thinking.
