Worth booking in advance: Joshua Tree National Park’s Keys Ranch tour

Most of Joshua Tree National Park is strange and beautiful and quiet and empty. The occasional sign tells a story of the wildlife, geology, or Indigenous history, but for the most part, the landscape doesn’t give a lot away. Which is a big part of why I loved the Keys Ranch tour, a two-hour seasonal tour led by national park rangers who offer a lively narrative that brings to life the geological history, the Native American history, and the pre-national-park settler history, of which the Keys Ranch is a pretty wild example.

I booked the Keys Ranch tour on a whim. I’d been to the national park before but didn’t know much about the history of the land—on my previous visit I’d mostly been fixated on the delightfully bizarre landscape and the exhilarating hiking. 

The seasonal tour (October to May) had just restarted on my early October visit. Based on the heat of the unseasonably warm morning, I see why they don’t run tours in the hottest summer months—the two hour tour circles the ranch and offers very little shade.

GREAT PAIRING: Palm Springs and Joshua Tree are an ideal desert duo

Our tour guide brought a big stack of sun umbrellas—without them, I think many of us would have melted in the mid-morning sun. 

From the outset, the tour feels like an adventure. A trip down a dirt road near Barker Dam takes you to a small parking lot guarded by a locked gate where we met our park ranger guide, who checks in everyone (you must book in advance; the 2025 tour cost is $20 for adults; $10 for kids and seniors; and $1 for kids under 4) and then opens the gate and leads the slow caravan down the road to the ranch. 

On my autumn tour, we gathered at the picnic tables near the ranch to learn about the geological and native history of the area, and then began a slow circuit past hundred-year-old outbuildings, rusting farm equipment, old trucks and drills, a chicken coop in a car, and Joshua trees and cholla cactus before eventually looping around to the main house, where we all got the chance to peer through the dusty windows to see still-life moments from another era: an old icebox in the corner, a long-forgotten coffee cup sitting at a kitchen table. 

Along the way, the ranger told us about late nineteenth and early twentieth century homesteaders and cattle rustlers who carved lives out of the desert here. In the case of Bill Keys and his ranch, it’s a story that includes creative ownership, feuds, and some prison time along with many different desert careers. 

The ranger tour guides do a great job telling many different stories simultaneously and keeping things interesting. That said, it may not be the best fit for young kids–on my tour, there were a few children who ranged in age from three to seven and who quickly got bored, hot, and unhappy. And since the ground is uneven and there’s a lot of standing in the sun, the tour may not be a good fit for people with mobility challenges.