Spotlight: Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Among stargazers, creating light pollution is the equivalent of throwing trash out of a car window. That’s why the streetlights in Borrego Springs are subtle, not glaring, and the local airport has adjusted its aircraft beacon to angle downward. The town’s residents like to see their skies illuminated by millions of bright stars, and they plan to keep it that way. Borrego Springs is the first International Dark Sky Community in California, having earned that distinction by restricting and modifying lights on public streets, outside of businesses, and even on residents’ front porches. It doesn’t hurt to have a high mountain range between here and the big, bright cities and towns of Southern California, plus 600,000 acres/242,811 hectares of undeveloped Anza-Borrego Desert State Park all around. 

If you’d like to school up on what you’re seeing, schedule an evening under the stars with astronomer Dennis Mammana of Borrego Night Sky Tours. The Springs at Borrego, an RV resort with a small observatory housing an 11-inch diameter telescope, holds public viewings and lectures several times a year. In April, take part in even more events during Dark Sky Week.

The creatures pop up alongside Borrego Springs Road: Prehistoric elephants. A saber-tooth cat. An ancient camel. A T. rex and a giant bird of prey. Not the flesh-and-blood kind, but remarkable art pieces—sometimes whimsical, sometimes haunting—are the one of a kind works of sculptor Ricardo Breceda, whose creations delight and surprise drivers near the town of Borrego Springs.

While some creatures are ambitious fantasies, such as a 350-foot-long serpent arcing across the playa, but many of the sculptures represent real-life creatures that once roamed this land. In 2008, Breceda was originally commissioned by local philanthropist Dennis Avery to make sculptures for his extensive desert property known as Galleta Meadows, but the creatures seem to have multiplied around town. To find Breceda’s 130 or so rust-red, scrap-metal sculptures, pick up a detailed map at the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association bookstore in Borrego Springs (also a great place for nature-themed gifts).

When most people visualize living off the land, the first thing they’d want handy is a good water supply. Not so with 1930s-40s artist and writer Marshal South, who decided to homestead on Anza-Borrego’s Ghost Mountain. South and his wife built an adobe home on top of the arid mountain and lived there with their three children for 17 years. The family tried to live simply by emulating the spartan style of early Native Americans, inventing systems for storing precious rainfall, tending a vegetable garden, and harvesting seeds and fruits from desert plants. To earn money, South wrote articles about his family’s back-to-nature lifestyle for Desert Magazine and Arizona Highways. An Australian who was an accomplished poet, South inspired a huge following of readers who eagerly awaited his next installment.

South’s wife eventually grew weary of the rugged desert life and her husband's odd idealism, and the family split up and left the mountain in 1947. The short Ghost Mountain Trail visits their old homestead, climbing gently through a series of switchbacks to the mountaintop. In spring, the ocotillos and yuccas put on a colorful show. At the summit, you’ll find a few partial walls, an old mattress frame, and some cisterns and barrels, all that remains of South’s utopian dream.