This month, Grant Grove in Kings Canyon will host the 100th Annual Trek to the Nation’s Christmas Tree. On December 14, assembling at 2 p.m. with the official ceremony beginning at 2:30 p.m. The event honors the General Grant Tree, the long-lived, enormous, and officially recognized “Nation’s Christmas Tree.” December 14 is also a free entrance day at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, so Grant Grove will see heavier foot traffic and limited parking. The General Grant Tree stands roughly 268 feet tall and is among the world’s oldest living trees — an apt living symbol for a national observance. President Calvin Coolidge designated it the Nation’s Christmas Tree on April 28, 1926. Congress later named it a National Shrine under Public Law 441 on March 29, 1956, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz dedicated the tree on November 11, 1956, as a perpetual shrine honoring the nation’s armed forces. Those layers of designation give the site ecological, historical, and commemorative weight.
A string of storms this fall left Death Valley doing what it rarely does: collecting rainwater.
On October 30 the Bureau of Land Management lifted seasonal fire restrictions on BLM-managed public lands in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, southern Inyo, eastern Mono, San Diego, and eastern Kern counties. Campfires, barbecues, and gas stoves are allowed again on those BLM lands — but only with a valid California campfire permit. Permits are required outside developed campgrounds and are available for free at 
A stubborn storm parked over Death Valley on November 15, 2025, and the desert didn’t know what hit it: Furnace Creek recorded 0.6 inches of rain — a number that’s more than a quarter of the park’s usual annual total. In terrain that sheds water off bedrock and washes it down into narrow canyons, that half-inch-plus didn’t soak in; it ran hard and fast, turning arroyo channels into destructive flows of mud, rock, and debris that have chewed up road shoulders and left pavement buried or gone.
The Johnson Valley community has been holding its breath these past months as the U.S. Marine Corps’ Special Use Airspace proposal, R2509, moves through the public process. After an intense wave of local comments and outreach, momentum slowed during the government shutdown — but the Marines have since released public fact sheets about the proposal. That put new material in front of the public, and it’s precisely the sort of moment when clear information matters most.