MORONGO BASIN, Calif. — Along a dusty highway snaking through the Southern California desert, Eric Wilson rattles off a list of fruits and vegetables available from his nearby farm.
He has been selling locally grown kale, lettuce, tomatoes and other produce since April at the Morongo Valley Fruit Market, a small grocery store he and his wife took over earlier this year.
Despite being located in what Wilson calls a “food desert” — the nearest grocery store is 15 minutes away in neighboring Yucca Valley — Wilson was initially dismissed as yet another outsider seeking to gentrify the quiet community.
“People assumed I’m from L.A.,” said Wilson, who grew up in Cathedral City, some 30 minutes away. “I was called a yuppie because of the organic prices.”
Once a hamlet for cowboys and homesteaders, the Morongo Basin is undergoing rapid change amid an influx of urbanites seeking to escape city life during the pandemic. They come to the sun-drenched desert in hopes of finding fresh air, cheap homes and Instagram-worthy backdrops.
But what is considered affordable for residents from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley or New York is out of reach for many longtime residents, who say transplants are pricing out locals and disrupting the fragile ecosystem.
“It’s a culture clash,” said Sarah Kennington, of the Morongo Basin Conservation Association. “Everybody loves [Joshua Tree National Park], everybody loves the desert, and if you were mellow, it was fine. But it’s not the place that it was decades ago.”
Located more than 100 miles outside Los Angeles, the Morongo Basin is tucked within the greater Mojave Desert. It borders Joshua Tree National Park and includes the communities of Morongo and Yucca valleys, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Pioneertown and others.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
