Minerva Hoyt was a socialite interesting in plants. After her marriage, she’d trek out to the desert where she fell in the love with landscape and plants and animals she found there. So she was dis heartened when she saw that tourists where digging up the plants and taking them back to there homes in the city of California. She petitioned the government, unsuccessfully, at first for it to be turned into a National Park. It took a campaign and support from other nature and plant lovers to get the area officially commissioned as Joshua Tree National Park.
The Ramblings of a Jedi Librarian 