The Yuha Desert is a section of the

Sonoran Desert The Sonoran Desert ( es, Desierto de Sonora) is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Arizona ...

located in the

Imperial Valley , photo = Salton Sea from Space.jpg , photo_caption = The Imperial Valley below the Salton Sea. The US-Mexican border runs diagonally across the lower left of the image. , map_image = Newriverwatershed-1-.jpg , map_caption = Map of Imperial ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

; south of

Interstate 8 Interstate 8 (I-8) is an Interstate Highway in the southwestern United States. It runs from the southern edge of Mission Bay at Sunset Cliffs Boulevard in San Diego, California, almost at the Pacific Ocean, to the junction with I-10, ...

, west of

El Centro El Centro (Spanish for "The Center") is a city and county seat of Imperial County, California, United States. El Centro is the largest city in the Imperial Valley, the east anchor of the Southern California Border Region, and the core urban are ...

, and north of the

international border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...

. Unique aspects of the Yuha Desert include the Oyster Shell Beds, De Anza Historical Monument, Crucifixion Thorn Natural Area, and the Yuha

geoglyph A geoglyph is a large design or motif (generally longer than 4 metres) produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignmen ...

. It is the homeland of the Kamia, also spelled

Kumeyaay The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

, and may have been used by other Native American groups such as the

Cahuilla The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California.Quechan The Quechan (or Yuma) (Quechan: ''Kwatsáan'' 'those who descended') are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the Mexican border. Despite the ...

, and Cocopah

Native America The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...

n people. The Yuha Desert is designated an

Area of Critical Environmental Concern Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) is a conservation ecology program in the Western United States, managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The ACEC program was conceived in the 1976 Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (F ...

by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

and is managed by the agency as a limited use area for biologic and archaeological resource conservation. The primary species of concern is the

flat-tailed horned lizard The flat-tail horned lizard (''Phrynosoma mcallii'' ) is a species of lizard in the family Phrynosomatidae. A species of reptile, it is endemic to the Sonoran desert of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. Its multiple adapta ...

. Off highway vehicles are limited to signed routes to protect both the flat-tail horned lizard habitat and the archaeological resources including prehistoric campsites and

lithic reduction In archaeology, in particular of the Stone Age, lithic reduction is the process of fashioning stones or rocks from their natural state into tools or weapons by removing some parts. It has been intensely studied and many archaeological industries ...

sites along the former edges of

Lake Cahuilla Lake Cahuilla ( ; also known as Lake LeConte and Blake Sea) was a prehistoric lake in California and northern Mexico. Located in the Coachella and Imperial valleys, it covered surface areas of to a height of above sea level during the Holocen ...

, as well as sites representing the use of the region within the historic era.

References

External links

Overland Desert Routes Western Imperial County

BLM PDF titled "Exploring the Yuha Desert"

– DesertUSA Colorado Desert Deserts and xeric shrublands in the United States Deserts of California Deserts of the Lower Colorado River Valley Landforms of Imperial County, California Geography of Baja California Sonoran Desert Bureau of Land Management areas in California Protected areas of Imperial County, California {{ImperialCountyCA-geo-stub

See also

References

External links