A popular canyon area of Joshua Tree National Park has been shut down because vandals have defaced the area with graffiti splashed across rocks and archeological sites, officials said Monday. Rattlesnake Canyon has been shut down temporarily as park officials assess the damage, which apparently has been encouraged by people on social media sites, according to officials. Investigators with the National Park Service, which administers the park, believe that posts on social media played a role by sparking "numerous individuals' interest in adding to the vandalism," a National Park Service statement said. "The continued malicious desecration of the national park has now impacted archeological sites," park officials said in a statement.
– Some 300 acres of California's Joshua Tree National Park are closed to visitors thanks to a rare spate of graffiti. First, park rangers closed an area surrounding a historic dam following the discovery of carved graffiti. Then, this week, the popular Rattlesnake Canyon was closed after words—including "nature boy" and "oatmeal cookie"—were found painted onto boulders, the Wall Street Journal reports. The canyon is set to be closed for the rest of the month, while the dam area is closed indefinitely, officials say. "People are appalled and people are wondering how it could happen here, in a national park," says a ranger. Indeed, just 4.8 incidents of vandalism per park occurred last year. One possible reason for the graffiti's spread: social media, which "has appeared to spark numerous individuals' interest in adding to the vandalism," rangers say, per the Los Angeles Times. (The Post notes they didn't specify which social media sites may be involved.) It's not just natural beauty at risk: "The continued malicious desecration of the national park has now impacted archeological sites," officials say. Native American petroglyphs may have been damaged; rangers are trying to figure out how to clean the sites without hurting them further.