Twentynine Palms, commonly shortened to 29 Palms, is a city in San Bernardino County, California, set in the Mojave Desert's Morongo Basin. The city takes its name from the palm trees of the Oasis of Mara, an ancient spring-fed oasis that long predates European settlement and remains a cultural touchstone. Today Twentynine Palms occupies a distinctive niche in the High Desert: it is the main entrance to Joshua Tree National Park and home to the park's headquarters, while also hosting the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, the largest Marine Corps training base in the world. That dual identity — national park gateway and military town — shapes the community. The base traces its origins to the early 1950s, when the Marine Corps took over the former Condor Field glider base and began building a desert training installation. The military remains a defining economic and social force, bringing service members and families to the city alongside artists, park visitors, and desert residents drawn by the stark landscape and lower cost of living. With roughly 28,000 residents, Twentynine Palms retains a small-town, frontier character. The Oasis of Murals, begun in 1994, has turned building walls throughout town into a public-art chronicle of local history, earning the city the nickname "Oasis of Murals." Joshua Tree National Park spreads across some 794,000 acres of Colorado and Mojave desert to the south, drawing climbers, hikers, and stargazers from around the world. The broader Morongo Basin, including Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree, forms a connected High Desert region served by shared schools, a highway corridor, and a distinct desert culture. For homebuyers, Twentynine Palms offers desert living at the edge of a national park, with Spanish-inspired homes, expansive views, and a community shaped in equal measure by the Marine Corps, the arts, and the surrounding wilderness.