Joshua Forest.........

JOSHUA MOHAVE

Mohave County, our neighboring county to California, Nevada and Utah up in northwestern Arizona, is full of mad, tossing mountains, sweeping desert, moonlight and mines, color and cattle, the Colorado and Lake Mead. U.S. Highway 66 crosses it east and west and Highway 93, joining "66" at Kingman hurries north to Boulder and Las Vegas. Another highway, U.S. 91, bites off a corner of Mohave County on its way from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, and all points north. It's a big, boisterous, rough country, and Good Dame Nature didn't do anything in half measures, when, in a frolicsome mood, she threw Mohave county together. When she created that vast Joshua forest through which the traveler passes from U.S. 93, 35 miles north of Kingman, to Pierce Ferry, on the upper Lake Mead where the lake and Grand Canyon meet, Good Dame Nature used the poetic touch.

FOREST COUNTY

For this forest is a fantasy in poetry and music, whose composer sounded strange, but beautiful chords. To the beholder for the first time, the forest has an almost terrifying effect. A single Joshua tree is unusual, but miles of Joshua trees slug the senses. Nothing in the experience of the beholder prepares him for his first sight of a Joshua forest, and it is only after the first shock of unreality wears off that the strange beauty of the forest becomes so overwhelmingly strong.

Mohave county's Joshua forest is a creation in sheer beauty. The Pierce Ferry road winds its way through it for miles. From a high knoll, it appears as a segment from another world, a study in grotesque shapes. Again the forest crowds the road and the trees, with twisted limbs, tower above the road in menacing attitudes. When the forest is in bloom it appears like a white, fleecy cloud, wandering too close to the earth... R. C.