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One of the lesser-known desert jewels of Southern California is located in East San Diego County, smack dab in the middle of the Colorado Desert Anza-Borrego.
While the Anza-Borrego Desert Region extends all the way to the Imperial Valley and even down to the Mexican border, its best-defined boundaries are within Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
Formerly known as Borego Palms Desert State Park (with the misspelling of the Spanish word borrego, meaning lamb) and simply Anza Desert State Park in the 1930s, it s not only California s first desert park, it s also our largest state park!
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No thanks to a dry winter, visitors to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park this spring won’t get to enjoy a wildflower “super bloom,” but an unexpected rainstorm on Wednesday afternoon has raised hopes for a late-season burst of color in early April.
Borrego Springs officials said last week they’re enjoying a moderately busy wildflower visitor season, despite COVID-19 rules that have continued to restrict restaurants to outdoor dining, canceled on-site tourist events and kept the doors locked at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park visitors center. But that’s an improvement from last year, when the pandemic bloomed just a couple weeks into the peak season of March and April. Stay-at-home orders in spring 2020 temporarily closed the state park and all restaurants, hotels, non-essential businesses and even community parks.