Palms to Pines Scenic Byway

The Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center on Highway 74 in Palm Desert — the addressable, desert-floor start of the Palms to Pines drive, at the foot of the mountain wall you're about to…

The legend of the Lost Ship of the Desert — a Spanish pearl galleon said to have sailed up into the great inland lake that once filled the basin below you, and to lie buried in the sand out there still, treasure and all.

The Coachella Valley Vista Point a few miles up Route 74 — a sweeping pull-off looking back down over the whole desert valley, Palm Springs, and on the clearest days a glint of the Salton Sea.

Let me tell you why this climb is so steep and so sudden — because it's one of the most dramatic pieces of geology in the country, and you're driving right up the face of it. This whole range, the San Jacinto Mountain…

How the Pines to Palms Highway finally got built — the decades of horseback-only travel, the promoters who wouldn't quit, and the hand-cut gravel road that opened in 1932.

As you climb, it's worth knowing whose mountain this really is — because people have lived up and down this exact slope, from the desert to the pines, for about three thousand years. They're the Cahuilla, and this who…

The Cahuilla Tewanet Scenic Overlook — a signature interpretive pull-off high on Route 74, with Cahuilla-themed panels and a grand view down the Santa Rosa Mountains into the desert canyons that were, and are, Cahuill…

As you drive this stretch through the Santa Rosa Mountains, I want you to keep your eyes up on the rocky slopes and your foot ready on the brake — because this is bighorn sheep country, and it needs your care. These a…

Pinyon Flats — the high desert bench where the road levels into open pinyon-juniper woodland, the middle rung of the great ecological ladder this drive climbs from desert to alpine forest.

Down in the valley below Garner Valley lies Hemet, home of the Ramona Pageant — America's longest-running outdoor play, born of a novel meant to shame a nation into treating Native people justly.

Here's a way to think about the drive you're making that I love. More than a hundred years ago, a naturalist named C. Hart Merriam came out to these very mountains of Southern California to work out one of the big ide…

Garner Valley — the broad, green, five-thousand-foot mountain valley the road runs through: horse ranches, oak-dotted grassland, and the long shoulder of Thomas Mountain, a startling stretch of pastoral high country h…

Lake Hemet — the mountain reservoir at the head of Garner Valley, held back by an 1895 stone dam that was, for sixteen years, the tallest solid masonry dam on Earth.

How they built the Lake Hemet dam in the 1890s — hauling fifteen-ton granite blocks up a mountain with mule teams to raise, for sixteen years, the tallest solid masonry dam on Earth.

The junction at Mountain Center — where Route 74 meets Route 243, and the drive makes its single mandatory turn: NORTH (right) onto Route 243 toward Idyllwild.

Idyllwild — the mile-high pine-forest village beneath the granite walls of Tahquitz Rock and Suicide Rock: an arts town, a climbers' town, and for the Cahuilla a summer refuge from the desert heat.

How Idyllwild came to be governed by a golden retriever — Mayor Max, elected in 2012 and beloved ever since, the friendliest head of state in the San Jacintos.

The great Cahuilla legend of Tahquitz — the first shaman, gifted then corrupted, banished into these very peaks, said to streak the night sky as a ball of green fire to this day.

A few straight words about the driving on this next stretch, because Route 243 down toward Banning is steep, and it winds, and it deserves your respect. First, your brakes: on a long descent like this, don't just ride…

The Cahuilla story behind Suicide Rock, the pale dome standing near Tahquitz Rock above Idyllwild — a mother's terrible choice, and why the two rocks stand together over the town.

The long, winding Route 243 descent from Idyllwild toward Banning — switchbacks and vista turnouts hung high on the range's north face, looking out over the San Gorgonio Pass to the 11,500-foot bulk of Old Greyback.

Off to your right and above you, as you come down the 243, lies some of the wildest country in Southern California — the San Jacinto Wilderness, a great roadless block of high granite peaks, hidden lakes, and old-grow…

The 2013 Mountain Fire — how a wildfire roared up this range in a July week, drove Idyllwild's whole town down the mountain, and why the scarred slopes you pass are healing still.

As you come down the last of the mountain toward Banning, look ahead into that deep gap between the ranges — the San Gorgonio Pass — and notice the wind. You'll feel it push the car; you'll see those thousands of whit…

Banning, at the foot of Route 243 in the windy San Gorgonio Pass — the end of the drive, where the mountains give way to the valley, the wind turbines spin, and the great transect from palms to pines runs out at last.…