Search

Home > Desert Oracle Radio > Celebrate ten years of cleaning up Giant Rock this weekend for Public Lands Day
Podcast: Desert Oracle Radio
Episode:

Celebrate ten years of cleaning up Giant Rock this weekend for Public Lands Day
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-09-25 15:43:46
Description:

In collaboration with BLM Barstow, Blightsites, the Desert Cleanse Project, the Element Society, the High Desert Keepers, the Landers Homestead Valley Association, and the Mojave Desert Land Trust, join your neighbors to keep up the good work at Giant Rock in Landers: the iconic but consistently vandalized and littered hi-desert landmark.

Participants have their choice to camp out the night before on Friday, September 26 starting at 3:00 p.m. for application and prep of the graffiti removal solution “Elephant Snot,” followed by “Stories on the Split” at 7:00 p.m., with community members, culture bearers, and volunteers sharing stories of the boulder. 

Saturday’s cleanup begins at 9:00 a.m. Bring brimmed hats, gloves, and plenty of drinking water, as the water available is not potable and is only used for pressure washing. Complimentary pizza from $5 Pizza in Landers will be served at noon. 

We asked Positional Projects founder Kaz Newman to reflect on the last ten years of the cleanup efforts:

“It’s better every year! A couple years back we added the graffiti removal to the general cleanup. During the pandemic we noticed a huge increase in that. But now, here in 2025 there’s just a few marks on the Mother stone itself, so we’ll take care of that this Saturday. There’s also a little cove that’s really charming and popular for day picnickers and campers and that has a ton of graffiti we’ve never actually touched, so we’ve included that as a big goal to make that a pleasant place for people to recreate.” 

Newman also mentioned Miriam Ditty, Regional Director of the Indigenous Society for Architecture, will also be making an appearance at 7:00 p.m. Friday night in the rock’s vortex, located in its legendary split.

“She’s a very interesting artist herself. We will be speaking about the 25th anniversary of the rock breaking. There’s something that people are curious about called a Hopi prophecy, so we’ll be discussing that, and we have unearthed a recording from a woman who has a story about George Van Tassel talking to her about the rock breaking and what that would mean for her and her work, so we’ll be sharing that as well.”

The Mojave Correspondence Club have also created custom stamps to commemorate the split, and volunteers can create their own mail-art postcard with optional entry into Positional Project’s first edition postal art geocache contest.

Participants are asked to RSVP for accurate headcount. For a link to register, please visit:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/10th-annual-giant-rock-npld-storiesandstewardship-2025-92724-tickets-1486659361169?aff=oddtdtcreator

The post Celebrate ten years of cleaning up Giant Rock this weekend for Public Lands Day appeared first on Z107.7 FM Joshua Tree.
Total Play: 0