Just outside Joshua Tree National Park in California’s high desert, two new independent hotels are bringing design-forward hospitality to Twentynine Palms, a city better known for its budget chains. Opened in summer 2025 near the popular national park, Reset Hotel is a boutique hotel made from repurposed shipping containers, and Hotel Wren is a vintage roadside lodge. Both offer designs that connect guests to the cacti- and boulder-filled landscape.
Reset Hotel
A five-minute drive from the north entrance of Joshua Tree, Reset debuted as the first newly built hotel in the Mojave Desert’s Morongo Basin in the past 15 years. The 65-room hotel opened on July 21, with nightly rates starting at $250.
“Joshua Tree already feels otherworldly, so one of our earlier design prompts was ‘What would a hotel on Mars look like if it was built to feel in connection to nature?’” says designer Ben Uyeda, who worked with the Los Angeles–based design studio Gry Space to create the look.
On the edge of the national park lands, Reset Hotel offers private patios, modular design, and even a few rooms with outdoor bathtubs.
Photo by Gry Space
Their answer? A striking shipping-container design. Each room has a private patio with a fire pit and a stargazing platform—and some even come with an outdoor soaking tub. Nature and wellness activities include guided stargazing experiences, saunas, breathwork sessions, and yoga classes. There’s also a 1,000-square-foot saltwater pool that has a view of the mountains framing the national park, plus 180 acres of protected desert owned by Reset Hotel.
Reset owner Adam Wininger made the amenities a priority. “What I really like is staying somewhere with a unique design, a great pool with food offerings, cool rooms, and at a price that’s not going to break the bank,” says Wininger. “That’s what we wanted to build, and it’s crazy to me [that] it doesn’t exist already given how many people come to Joshua Tree every year.”
Hotel Wren
Within a revamped motel, Hotel Wren offers hand-carvings and ceiling murals, a classic pool, and a shop selling desert provisions and handcrafts.
Courtesy of Hotel Wren
Opened in April 2025, Wren is a restored 1940s roadside lodge with 12 rooms, each starting at $275. All the rooms were designed as private residences with built-in banquettes and gas fireplaces; six have a private patio that opens to the windswept rock formations, Mojave yucca, and clay-colored sands. Terra-cotta floors, hand-painted tiles, a botanic mural, and a desert-hued color palette give the hotel a cozy, rustic aesthetic. The lobby doubles as a living room where bookshelves are stocked with titles on birding, astronomy, geology, hiking, philosophy, and nature. Typically, the hotel is adults-only to foster quiet connection, but keep an eye out for scheduled family-friendly weekends.
Jessica Pell, founder of Los Angeles–based Manola Studio, has been coming to Joshua Tree since childhood and designed the property as her love letter to the desert. “Hotel Wren was shaped by the land that surrounds it,” she says. “In just minutes, you can move from refined textures and warm, thoughtful spaces to the raw beauty of boulders and open sky.”
Since Wren is a 10-minute drive from Joshua Tree’s north entrance, Pell says the national park has “become both a ritual and a sacred place for me. Often, I’ll slip in just before sunset to reset and to be with the beauty and stillness that never fails to bring me back to center.”
