For Bryan Simmering, a recent trip to Joshua Tree National Park was nearly 30 years in the making.
“I was 27 when (rock group U2’s) ‘Joshua Tree’ came out. And I decided I have to go there one day,” he said, looking at the small lake formed by Barker Dam in the national park as large as Rhode Island.
“This place really exceeded my expectations,” he said. “I thought we would come up here and breeze right through this … it is an amazing place.”
The California desert national park has been a draw for some time and even saw record attendance last year. This year could see even more visitors, as March 9 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of U2’s album of the same name — “The Joshua Tree.” In May, the Irish rock group U2 begins touring to celebrate the anniversary and comes to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on May 20 and 21.
• Related story: 5 cool facts about U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ on its 30 anniversary
Making the trek to the desert could be something uber fans do this year as did David Smith, Joshua Tree National Park superintendent, years ago.
The album “drew me and my classmates (at UC Berkeley) down from college to the images evoked from that amazing piece of music,” Smith said in a recent interview. The 30th anniversary tour will certainly influence more people to visit the park this year, Smith said, but didn’t offer an estimate of how many.
Last year, the park saw a record 2,505,286 visitors, up nearly 200 percent from 2006. And it reflects the third straight year the park saw more visitors. Last year’s visitation count was nearly 24 percent more than 2015.
By comparison, visitation at Yosemite National Park has increased 163 percent from 2006 to 2016, while Death Valley National Park increased 174 in that 10-year period.
• Photos: Joshua Tree National Park sees steady tourism increase
Ironically, the Joshua tree photographed for the album cover was closer to Death Valley National Park than Joshua Tree National Park. The spot, near Darwin, is in the Mojave Desert of Inyo County. The tree collapsed and died “sometime around 2000,” according to George Land, public information officer for Joshua Tree National Park.
Another famous desert spot, north of the National Park along Highway 62 in Twentynine Palms, is the eight-room Harmony Motel. The small overnight stop invokes U2 in its advertising. Flyers in the lobby read “Pop Legends U2 stayed at the Harmony, why not U too!”
The motel, now owned by South African native Nalini Ash Maharaj, who said she didn’t know the group stayed there when she purchased the property in 2004.
But soon after acquiring the property on the western edge Twentynine Palms, a former owner told her about the stay by the pop culture legends.
“I was shocked,” Maharaj said. “It was an amazing connection.”
• Related story: 7 songs that didn’t make the cut for U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’
The album came out while she was a student at South Africa’s University of Durban — Westville, Maharaj said, “It spoke to me.”
The group’s support for the liberation of people of color in South Africa dovetailed with her own political leanings and those of her many student friends, she said. And once apartheid ended, the band continued to support the African continent in the fight against AIDS, she said in the courtyard of the small motel at 71161 Twentynine Palms Highway.
The association with U2 is one of the reasons some stay at the motel.
For two New Zealand-born sisters, the U2 association was a factor in the decision to stay there, said Jo Bennett, 29, who now lives in London.
• Map: Notable stops U2 made while shooting “The Joshua Tree” album cover
“We try to meet each other half-way once a year,” said Kate Bennett, 33, who lives in Auckland, N.Z. It’s an 11-hour flight for each when they fly into LAX. Both women have a passion for deserts.
While Joshua Tree National Park got special recognition 30 years ago with U2’s fifth studio album, there are other links to the music industry as well.
According to park officials,
• Album-cover designer Gary Burden, and rock ’n’ roll photographer Henry Diltz, used the National Park as a backdrop for several artists including the Eagles, America and Mama Cass Elliot.
• Miley Cyrus was photographed at Barker Dam.
• Gram Parsons was illegally cremated in the park by his road manager.
• Rita Coolidge, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen have appeared at the park for charity events.
But it’s not just the music connections that bring people here.
On a visit to the park last month, Tyler Lappetito, 33, was hiking to the Hemingway rock formations.
A summer resident of Petersburg, Alaska, where he is a fisherman, and a winter vacationer in Los Angeles, Lappetito said he visited the park for the first time in 2009.
“It’s now part of my winter routine,” he said.
And despite the crowds on some of the more popular trails and rock formations, for some, like 62-year-old Marina del Rey resident John Abdo, that’s no deterrent.
“I can feel like I’m away from everything when I get to the top,” he said.
