One of my favorite places, Red Rock Canyon State Park is a fantastic area of cliffs, buttes, washes, badlands and beautiful rock formations in an area of 27,000 acres about 80 miles east of Bakersfield and 25 miles north of Mojave on Highway 14 in Kern County, just at the confluence of the southernmost Sierra Nevadas and the El Paso Range. Aside from its wildflowers, it is also a significant paleontological area with fossils dating back 8-10 million years which when I was a volunteer at the La Brea Tar Pits I visited several times on Museum-sanctioned fossil hunts. This area was created as a state park in 1968 when legislation was passed and signed to create Red Rock Canyon State Park, the first state park in Kern County. Wikipedia adds this: “Each tributary canyon is unique, with vivid colors due to alternate layers of white clay and red sandstone, further accented by pink volcanic rocks and brown lava formations. The canyon was formed 3 million years ago.  After wet winters, the park's floral displays are notable. Three overlapping desert ecosystems provide for the wildlife that includes eagles, falcons, roadrunners, hawks, coyotes, kit foxes, bobcats, lizards, mice and squirrels. The area was once home to the Kawaiisu people. Some petroglyphs and pictographs are found in the El Paso Mountains and represent ritual sites from ancestors of the Coso people were early indigenous inhabitants of this locale. They created extensive carvings in rock within the El Paso and neighboring mountains of Red Rock Canyon. and conducted considerable trade with other tribes as far as the Chumash on the Pacific coast. The colorful rock formations in the park served as landmarks during the early 1870s for 20-mule team freight wagons that stopped for water. The park protects significant paleontology sites and the remains of 1890s-era mining operations.” An upside-down V next to the common name indicates a taxon that was new to me when I photographed it, and an asterisk denotes a non-native species. Photographs included are from field trips in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009. A preliminary flora of Red Rock Canyon by former Ranger Mark Faull is online here.

Desert straw
Stephanomeria pauciflora
Asteraceae

Fan leaf
Psathyrotes annua
Asteraceae

Annual bur-sage
Ambrosia acanthicarpa
Asteraceae

Booth's clustered evening primrose
Eremothera boothii ssp. condensata
Onagraceae
[Named for William Beattie Booth, 1804-1874]

Sandpaper plant
Petalonyx thurberi ssp. thurberi
Loasaceae
[Named for George Thurber, 1821-1890]

Bigelows's coreopsis
Leptosyne bigelovii
Asteraceae
[Named for John Milton Bigelow, 1804-1878]

Chia
Salvia columbariae
Lamiaceae

Red-root cryptantha
Cryptantha micrantha
Boraginaceae

Cottontop cactus
Echinocactus polycephalus var. polycephalus
Cactaceae

Black mustard
Brassica nigra
Brassicaceae