Joshua Tree National Park is a U.S. National Park Service unit in CA (NPS unit code JOTR), straddling the transition between the Mojave and Colorado deserts and built around boulder-strewn high-desert basins where the namesake Joshua trees thrive. The park recorded 2,932,644 recreation visits in 2025 and runs a 5-year mean of 3,063,523 annual visits. Unlike most U.S. National Parks, Joshua Tree's busiest month is March and the quietest is July. Peak demand is the spring shoulder, not summer, and a second peak in November and December almost matches it. NPS specifically advises avoiding hiking 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in summer because daytime highs reach 104°F at the gateway station. It is also a designated International Dark Sky Park, and the Pinto Basin Road stretch has the darkest skies per NPS. This page is the navigation anchor for Joshua Tree coverage on this site: the best-time-to-visit pillar covers month-by-month crowd, weather, dark-sky timing, and the rain-dependent spring wildflower window; the visitation page covers the long-run annual chart through the 2023 record.
Designation, states, and coordinates come from the official NPS unit page. Annual visits and the busiest and quietest months are computed from the NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025 on NPS IRMA Stats. Each month's crowd label compares its five-year mean to the park's peak month. Independent site, not affiliated with the National Park Service.
Independent site. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Park Service. Data comes from the official NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025; editorial analysis is ours. The NPS Arrowhead and other NPS marks are not used.