Borrego Palm Canyon

View Larger Map

Some photos of Borrego Palm Canyon, part of California's enormous Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The surrounding area is nothing but dry, barren rocky hills, and then you come to this one little canyon with a stream running through it, its banks lined with palm trees, and it's shady and relatively cool. It's quite a pleasant oasis, even when it's full of tourists. Which it often is since there's a state park campground and a large parking lot nearby. Despite all that, it still kind of feels like you've stumbled across a secret oasis in the desert.

These are California fan palm trees, the only palm species native to the western USA. Palm trees are iconic in Southern California, but ornamental palm trees are often imports like the Canary Island date palm. Even California's native palm species isn't indigenous to the Los Angeles area; several years ago the city council decided that ornamental palm trees are undesirable, and the city plans to replace most of them with other trees that provide more shade and less mess. Except for major tourist areas, of course, because tourists demand palm trees.