Promoting Paradise on Satan's Paper

The Weight of the Sky (Part II)

Did you know the Joshua Tree, yucca brevifolia, was universally derided as the most grotesque object on earth following its discovery by white Europeans in the 1840s? Numerous schemes arose to exterminate it from the California desert, the most interesting and ambitious among them being an attempt to turn the tree into paper— “California Cactus Paper.”

My last post, with the help of a Johnny Depp Christian Dior 'Sauvage’ cologne commercial, began to excavate this unknown, buried history. The excavation itself began, almost accidentally, as the result of a Covid-canceled wedding in Joshua Tree, California.

This post pushes the story forward, jumping into the actual plan, beginning in the 1870s, to profitably wipe the infernal tree from the face of the earth, a scheme that coincided—in a shocking instance of historical synchronicity—with Southern California itself becoming the most promoted region in the history of the world.