LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. — The U.S. Marine Corps tried as soon as to occupy this distant stretch of California desert beloved by off-roaders — however officers managed finally to dealer a deal that allowed each leathernecks and dust riders to share the identical rocky canyons and wrinkled mountains of Johnson Valley.
Now, greater than a decade later, the Marines are again — and this time, they need the skies.
The Pentagon has proposed limiting civilian air visitors above a lot of the Johnson Valley Off-Freeway Automobile Space to increase and help coaching workout routines. However those that frequent the world simply west of the Twentynine Palms Marine base say the proposal would severely restrict leisure entry and scale back security.
They are saying the airspace restrictions may forestall rescue helicopters from evacuating injured motorists, and threaten the famed King of the Hammers off-road race that’s held there annually.
And maybe most crucially, they concern the proposal — which should be authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration — is simply step one towards the Marines ending public entry to an space that was put aside by Congress for public use.
“It feels like it’s literally just another way for them to take the land, but from above,” stated Shannon Welch, vice chairman of the off-road group Blue Ribbon Coalition.
The proposal has additionally drawn criticism from aviation officers, who say the restrictions may have an effect on the operations of small native airports and add time and value to business flights.
The navy says such fears are overblown.
Not too long ago, base officers stated that the proposal would limit the airspace for less than as much as 60 days per yr. Mission paperwork say the Marines are hoping the FAA will contemplate including extra days after the primary yr, however the base officers advised The Occasions they might not search further days of activation over the portion of Johnson Valley that’s shared with the general public. They’re additionally engaged on mitigation measures that may allow them to share the skies even when the restrictions are energetic, they stated.
“There is no intention to restrict public access to Johnson Valley,” stated Cindy Smith, land administration specialist with the bottom’s authorities and exterior affairs.
King of the Hammers founder Dave Cole walks alongside sand dunes within the Johnson Valley OHV Space the place the navy desires to impose restrictions on civilian plane.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Occasions)
Johnson Valley devotee Dave Cole lives on 15 acres that again up onto the OHV space. From his entrance door, he can hop in a side-by-side and traverse miles of rolling sand dunes and rugged boulder piles. The vastness reminds him of the ocean, the place consistently shifting tides imply that no two journeys yield the identical expertise. And on this planet of motorized recreation, the 96,000-acre driving space merely has no peer.
“Going off-roading and those kinds of things, that’s surfing for me, and this is like Oahu. It’s beachfront,” Cole stated.
One latest afternoon, he stood on a ridge above a sprawling dry lakebed. There, in a number of months, a short lived metropolis referred to as Hammertown would come up from the sun-baked sand. Some 80,000 individuals had been anticipated to look at rock-crawling competitions and races, camp out and listen to distributors pitch the most recent in automotive know-how.
The King of the Hammers off-road car competitors is held annually in February.
(Dennis Utt)
Cole co-founded King of the Hammers in 2007 — partly to fend off a westward enlargement by the Marine Corps. He thought an off-roading competitors would draw consideration to the Bureau of Land Administration-maintained space and display the significance of holding it open to the general public.
The 2-week pageant has since grown into one of many largest occasions on public land exterior of Burning Man and a report commissioned by San Bernardino County estimated the race’s financial affect to be $34 million in 2023.
As for the Marines’ enlargement ambitions, they had been addressed by a compromise within the 2014 protection invoice. The laws put aside about 43,000 acres of Johnson Valley for leisure use, 79,000 acres for the Marines and 53,000 to be shared. The Marines are permitted to shut that shared-use space for 2 30-day intervals annually.
The proposed airspace restrictions would stretch above a lot of the leisure space, together with all the shared-use space.
King of the Hammers depends on helicopters and drones to answer emergencies and to livestream the occasion worldwide. Welch, of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, described a possible lack of air help as “catastrophic.”
King of the Hammers is an off-road race that mixes desert racing and rock crawling. This race is held in February on Means Dry Lake at Johnson Valley.
(Dennis Utt)
Cole isn’t as fearful about King of the Hammers. He believes a compromise to accommodate the occasion is feasible and even probably. He’s extra involved that the proposal could mark the beginning of a broader takeover of the identical space the Marines sought to annex years in the past. “It’s a different bite; same apple,” he stated.
Army airspace restrictions above different public lands usually end in floor closures with little discover, Welch stated. Such areas embrace BLM-managed lands within the neighborhood of the White Sands Missile Vary in southern New Mexico, in addition to the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona, she stated.
Marine Corps officers stated they’re dedicated to honoring the shared-use settlement, however that they want further restricted airspace for coaching involving each piloted plane and drones.
Col. Benjamin Adams, assistant chief of employees for the bottom’s coaching directorate, pointed to a directive from Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth that each squad should be armed with small drones by the top of fiscal yr 2026. The Twentynine Palms base, with its 1,200 sq. miles of rugged coaching space, is without doubt one of the solely locations the Marines can carry out large-scale combined-arms workout routines, Adams stated.
“This is the golden jewel of the Marine Corps,” he stated. “The training we complete here cannot be conducted anywhere else in the Marine Corps, period.”
The Marines printed an outline of the airspace proposal in 2019, however a number of recreation advocates and native officers stated they didn’t hear about it till the Marines launched a draft environmental evaluation final month.
San Bernardino County Supervisor Daybreak Rowe questions whether or not federal officers have a full understanding of how the restrictions would have an effect on native residents. A minimum of 36 medical helicopters responded to the Johnson Valley space final yr, in response to statistics supplied to Rowe by the San Bernardino County Fireplace Safety District.
“Nobody really looks up to say, ‘what are we sacrificing on the other end of it?’ Is it public safety? Access to public lands and recreation? Private property rights of inholders?” she stated. “That falls to us on the outside who want to coexist with the Marines, who we respect, but also want to preserve the areas we have known and enjoyed for years.”
Each the Yucca Valley Airport District and the San Bernardino County Airport Fee have voted to submit letters opposing the proposal.
Each the Yucca Valley Airport District and the San Bernardino County Airport Fee have voted to submit letters opposing the Marine air restriction proposal.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Occasions)
A rise in navy flights by way of the Yucca Valley Airport’s visitors sample would increase public security and noise issues, wrote board director Tim Lewis. He famous the navy already has 31 particular use airspaces inside a 100 nautical-mile vary of the Twentynine Palms base, with restrictions operating nearly regularly from Barstow to Prescott, Ariz.
The addition of much more restrictions is more likely to affect business air journey, doubtlessly lowering the variety of flights by way of a heavily-used hall, he wrote. And it could limit using a number of small airports, together with the Yucca Valley Airport, Twentynine Palms Airport, Large Bear Metropolis Airport, Needles Airport, Barstow-Daggett Airport and Apple Valley Airport, he wrote.
“I think ultimately the Marines will find that the public opposition they’ve encountered will require them to make some compromises,” stated Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Large Bear Lake), who can be a pilot.
In the case of Large Bear, the proposed restrictions overlap with a line of strategy for pilots utilizing instrument flight guidelines, stated Obernolte, who beforehand served on the Large Bear Metropolis Airport board. If the proposal is authorized, these pilots wouldn’t have the ability to land on the airport below present procedures, he stated.
Obernolte is looking for to have a provision added to this yr’s protection invoice that may situation any enlargement on the Marines complying with a earlier legislation that requires them to work with the FAA to higher alert pilots to the standing of restricted airspace.
“This is a real sore issue,” pilot Jim Bagley stated just lately as he flew a small airplane by way of skies the U.S. Marine Corps is looking for to limit.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Occasions)
“This is a real sore issue,” stated Jim Bagley from the cockpit of his 1955 Cessna 172 because it roared by way of the airspace that may be topic to restriction. Hundreds of ft under, a smattering of outdated homesteads unfold out like enjoying playing cards on a poker desk.
The previous three-time mayor of Twentynine Palms, Bagley is now a leisure pilot and flight teacher who sits on the county Airport Fee. For him, backcountry flying is simply one other mode of sightseeing, like mountain climbing by way of Yosemite or boating beneath Niagara Falls.
Open areas like Johnson Valley — the place you’ll be able to race your side-by-side as quick as you need or land an ultralight on a dry lake mattress — are distinctive American experiences which are rising rarer, he stated.
But even Bagley, an in depth watcher of the challenge who had given the draft environmental evaluation a cautious learn, didn’t initially notice a number of the restrictions can be restricted to 60 days. That’s defined in an appendix greater than midway by way of the 394-page doc. The remainder repeatedly frames the proposal because the institution of everlasting restricted areas.
The Marines are already working with the FAA on that letter, which can allow the general public to make use of the airspace above the shared-use space for low-level flights, together with rescue helicopters, even when the restrictions are energetic, supplied the bottom is open, she stated. The letter will even accommodate all plane approaching Large Bear, stated Andy Chatelin, director of the bottom’s vary administration and improvement division.
Chatelin identified that the proposal has already gone by way of an FAA aeronautical research and security danger administration panel to find out its impacts on the Nationwide Airspace System. A last determination is predicted within the fall of 2026, he stated.
Had the Marine Corps held public conferences on the proposal and publicized the 60-day cap, a number of the backlash in opposition to it may probably have been averted, Bagley stated. He has no difficulty with the navy utilizing parts of the airspace for coaching after they want it, he stated.
“What I object to is taking away public access to the public lands — and those public lands include the airspace above them.”
