Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is a California State Park located within the Colorado Desert of Southern California, United States. Created in 1932, the park takes its name from 18th century Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and borrego, a Spanish word for sheep. With that includes one-fifth of San Diego County, it is the largest state park in California and the third largest state park nationally.
The park occupies eastern San Diego County and reaches into Imperial and Riverside counties, enveloping two communities: Borrego Springs, which is home to the park's headquarters, and Shelter Valley.
Geography
The park is an anchor in the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve, and adjacent to the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument.The great bowl of the surrounding desert is surrounded by mountains, with the Vallecito Mountains to the south and the highest Santa Rosa Mountains to the north which are in the wilderness area, without paved roads and with the only year-round creeks.
Blair Valley is a valley in the State Park.
It consists of the main Blair Valley and Little Blair Valley separated by a small mountain range over which Foot and Walker Pass leads.
To the west of the valley lies Granite Mountain, to the east the range of Vallecito Mountains.
The valley can be crossed by dirt roads, e.g., to reach a look-out point over Smuggler Canyon or sites of Indian pre-Hispanic art.
Borrego Palm Canyon is the site of park headquarters and has "the most famous view point in the park, overlooking barren, spectacularly eroded Borrego Badlands." Tamarisk Grove hosts a campground and is close to Yaqui Well, a "historic watering spot...with magnificent desert ironwood trees and a busy wildlife population."
Visiting
The park has of dirt roads, 12 designated wilderness areas, and of hiking trails. Park information and maps are available in the visitor center. The park has Wi-Fi access.The park is approximately a two-hour drive northeast from San Diego, southeast from Riverside or Irvine, and south from Palm Springs. Access on the east-Coachella Valley side is via County Route S22 and State Route 78. Access on the west-Pacific Ocean side is via California County Route S2 and State Route 78. SR-79 provides access through the high and forested Laguna Mountains, such as in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. These highways climb from the coast to above sea level, then descend down into the Borrego Valley in the center of the park. Access from the south is via the southern portion of S2.
A popular site to hike to near the visitor center is Hellhole Palms, a grove of California fan palms in Hellhole Canyon near Maidenhair Falls. The park also provides access points to the Pacific Crest Trail and the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.
Stargazing is another activity at Anza-Borrego. The park was designated an International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association in 2018.
Ecotourism is big for Anza-Borrego. On average, the population of Borrego Springs increases by about 580% in peak wildflower superbloom season. This is a shift from around 3400 long-term residents to around 200,000 tourists.
Flora and fauna
The habitats are primarily within the Colorado Desert ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert ecoregion. The higher extreme northern and eastern sections in the Peninsular Ranges are in the California montane chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. The park has about 600 species of native plants.The park contains bajadas and desert washes such as the Alma Wash; rock formations and colorful badlands, large arid landscapes, and mountains.
The bajadas are predominantly creosote bush-bur sage with creosote bush and the palo verde-cactus shrub ecosystems with the palo verde tree, cacti, and ocotillo. In the washes, Colorado/Sonoran microphylla woodlands can be found. These woodlands include such plants as smoke tree, velvet mesquite, and catclaw. The park is home to elephant trees, which are "fairly common in parts of Baja California but north of the border practically confined to the Anza-Borrego region."
The park has natural springs and oases, with the state's only native palm, the California fan palm. Seasonal wildflower displays can be seen in many plant community association throughout the park. Superblooms, one of the biggest Anza-Borrego State Park attractions, are indispensable indicators of the increasingly severe implications of climate change, precipitation levels, and shifting seasonal starting and ending periods. Superblooms are fundamental healthy and natural aspects to this desert, as it boosts the local economy with the influx of tourism and is vital player in the desert biome.
The high-country to the north and east has closed-cone pine forests, manzanitas and oak woodlands.
The oases are prolific with many types of fauna, especially for bird-watching. Throughout the park, visitors may see bighorn sheep, mountain lions, badgers, kit foxes, mule deer, coyotes, greater roadrunners, golden eagles, black-tailed jackrabbits, ground squirrels, kangaroo rats, deer mouse, quail, and prairie falcons. In the reptile class, desert iguanas, chuckwallas, and the red diamond rattlesnakes can be seen.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is home to multiple endangered species. Unfortunately, the building of roads and highways have a severe effect upon these species and roadkills are cause for serious concern. Roads not only contribute to habitat fragmentation which starkly divides ecosystems, but led to 18 roadkillings within just 5 days in a recent study done in 2018.
Bighorn sheep
Some areas are habitats for the desert bighorn sheep. The peninsula bighorn sheep reside in Anza-Borrego. They have been federally endangered since 1998 and are one of the most iconic species of this state park. Observers count this endangered species to study the population, and monitor its current decline from human encroachment. The two biggest threats to bighorn sheep populations are anthropogenic influences and climate change. As humans continue to develop in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the surrounding area, bighorn sheep continue to lose their habitat. Coupled with the increasing extreme temperatures and decrease in precipitation, bighorn shape face a decreasing free-standing water availability crisis. Bighorn sheep face considerable habitat loss at the hands of humans ranging from water diversion to noise pollution and habitat fragmentation. As critical members of this desert biome, it is important to recognize the necessity to protect them and mitigate our impact on their limited and unique environment.Climate and its impact on the landscape
Anza-Borrego State Park is located in the Colorado Desert Region of Southern California which is an extension of the Mexican Sonoran Desert. The Koppen Climate classification for Anza Borrego Desert State Park is BWh. The characteristics of this climate are typically hot and arid along with a deficiency in precipitation due to the continental tropical air mass which has very dry warm air. As climate change increases there is potential for wetter years which bring about "super blooms," that boost tourism during the winter and early spring. Locals began to rely on seasonal tourism to boost their economies, and, along with wet years climate change has threatened the economy as it has the ability to produce longer droughts which threaten the tourist dependent towns nearby. As the environment changes with climate desertification, locals and developers search for ways to maintain tourism, some attempt to maintain steady tourism with mega development of resorts or artificial oases. However, a study conducted on North-West China deserts in 2020 showed that artificial oases vegetation is not acclimated to drought conditions, and they consume large amounts of groundwater which deplete the water table level and outcompete native vegetation that store water in their roots. Since deserts have such extreme weather, the species that inhabit them are highly dependent on each other, and developing on deserts or creating artificial oases will not only impact vegetation but also animals.Geology and paleontology
The expanses of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park's eroded badlands also provide a different view into the region's long-vanished tropical past. The inland of southeastern California was not always a desert. Paleontology, the study of the fossilized remains of ancient life, is the key to understanding this prehistoric world. The park has an exceptional fossil record which includes preserved plants, a variety of invertebrate shells, animal tracks, and an array of bones and teeth. Most fossils found in the park date from six million to under a half million years in age, or about 60 million years after the last dinosaur age ended.Geology
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park lies in a unique geologic setting along the western margin of the Salton Trough. This major topographic depression with the Salton Sink having elevations of below sea level, forms the northernmost end of an active rift valley and a geological continental plate boundary. The trough extends north from the Gulf of California to San Gorgonio Pass, and from the eastern rim of the Peninsular Ranges eastward to the San Andreas Fault zone along the far side of the Coachella Valley.Over the past seven million years, a relatively complete geologic record of over of fossil-bearing sediment has been deposited within the park along the rift valley's western margin. Paleontological remains are widespread and diverse, and are found scattered over hundreds of square miles of eroded badlands terrain extending south from the Santa Rosa Mountains into northern Baja California in Mexico.
Both marine and terrestrial environments are represented by this long and rich fossil record. Six million years ago, the ancestral Gulf of California filled the Salton Trough, extending northward past what would become the city of Palm Springs. These tropical waters supported a profusion of both large and small marine organisms. Through time, the sea gave way as an immense volume of sediment eroded during the formation of the Grand Canyon spilled into the Salton Trough. Little by little, the ancestral Colorado River built a massive river delta across the seaway. Fossil hardwoods from the deltaic sands and associated coastal plain deposits suggest the region received three times as much rainfall as now.
The Anza-Borrego region gradually changed from a predominantly marine environment into a system of interrelated terrestrial habitats. North of the Colorado River Delta and intermittently fed by the river, a sequence of lakes and dry lakes has persisted for over three million years. At the same time, sediments eroded from the growing Santa Rosa Mountains and the other Peninsular Ranges to spread east into the trough. These sediments provide an almost unbroken terrestrial fossil record, ending only a half million years ago. Here, the deposits of ancient streams and rivers trapped the remains of wildlife that inhabited a vast brushland savannah laced with riparian woodlands.