Looting shuts down parts of Joshua Tree National Park

Two areas of Joshua Tree National Park noted for their mining artifacts have been closed indefinitely because of looting, according to the park’s superintendent.

The areas include Carey’s Castle and El Sid Mine, in the Eagle Mountains range in the southeast area of the park.

The areas will be closed “at least for a month” until cultural artifact teams can inventory and record the areas, and while the park devises an enforcement and surveillance strategy, park Supt. David Smith said.

“We had some looting at El Sid that started a few months ago,” he said. “We actually bought some artifacts to replace the original ones and they got stolen, too.” Both sites harbor former miners’ homesteads.

Neither site attracted many but the most intrepid cross-country hikers, until a newspaper recently printed a two-page spread about day hiking to Carey’s Castle, Smith said. Soon after, the ranger’s office received six calls in one day about the site, compared with about that many visits by individual hikers per month, along with a few Sierra Club-sponsored group trips per year, he said.

The National Park Service has struggled with the abandoned mines on its properties – there are 531 mining-related features in Joshua Tree, of which about 58 still require protection measures. Death Valley contains more than 9,000 such features.

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