Joshua Tree National Park visitor center could be renamed for late Dianne Feinstein

Several members of Congress want to honor the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her decades of work on desert conservation efforts by renaming a visitor center at Joshua Tree National Park after her.

A renaming bill, which received its first Senate hearing on Wednesday, was announced by the state’s two current senators, Democrats Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler, and Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Indio. The legislation would rename the Cottonwood Visitor Center — the less-traveled southern entrance to the park, about 25 miles east of Indio — after Feinstein, who died in September 2023.

“(Feinstein’s) perseverance has protected millions of acres across the State of California, including the beautiful desert I represent,” Ruiz said in a prepared statement. “May this Visitor Center stand as a testament to her enduring legacy and inspire generations to come.”

Feinstein has been widely hailed as a champion of the desert since introducing the historic California Desert Protection Act, which was signed into law in 1994. The legislation conserved nearly 9.2 million acres of public lands and established Joshua Tree National Park, Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. (Previously, both Death Valley and Joshua Tree had been national monuments.)

“Thirty years after the enactment of Senator Feinstein’s landmark California Desert Protection Act ... I can think of no better way to honor her legacy than by ensuring that the Park’s visitors are reminded of Senator Feinstein’s enduring public lands legacy,” Padilla said in the announcement.

More recently, in 2016, Feinstein backed conservation groups in successfully petitioning President Barack Obama to designate the Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow National Monuments. She also later co-sponsored the California Desert Protection and Recreation Act, which added 43,000 acres to Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks and designated 375,000 acres of wilderness and more than 70 miles of wild and scenic rivers.

The legislation unveiled Wednesday was praised by representatives from a long list of conservation groups, including the Conservation Lands Foundation, CalWild, the Mojave Desert Land Trust and the Wildlands Conservancy. Luke Basulto, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association and a desert native, said Feinstein “saw the beauty and value of a place that many others didn’t.”

“I met Senator Feinstein when I was 17 years old and just starting my journey as a conservationist,” Basulto said. “I thanked her for all of her work to protect the desert, and she told me to ‘keep it up.’ Fifteen years later, I continue to do what she asked.”

Feinstein’s focus on public lands has passed onto other California lawmakers, as Padilla has introduced bills to expand the Mojave National Preserve to encompass the Castle Mountains National Monument and to grow Joshua Tree National Park by about 17,000 acres. Those bills were also heard by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday.

Padilla, Butler and Ruiz are also pushing for new protected lands called the Chuckwalla National Monument, which would cover as much as 620,000 acres of rare desert habitat running from the Mecca Hills area in the eastern Coachella Valley to near the Colorado River. In April, the lawmakers unveiled a petition with 800,000 signatures in support of the proposal as they continue to push President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to protect the sprawling swath of land south of Interstate 10.

Tom Coulter covers local government in the Coachella Valley. Reach him at thomas.coulter@desertsun.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Joshua Tree visitor center may be named for late Dianne Feinstein