Speed limit drops to 35 mph on Highway 62 through Joshua Tree
The speed limit has changed on Highway 62 as you enter Joshua Tree, dropping from 45 to 35 miles per hour (MPH) as you enter downtown from the west and the east.
Driving westbound from Twentynine Palms, the speed limit is a generous 65 MPH until it begins to ramp down to 55 around Verbena Road, with multiple signs after that warning of a drop to 45 MPH as you enter Joshua Tree. The new 35 MPH speed limit begins right around Bonair Road and continues through the downtown corridor of Joshua Tree.
Driving east on Highway 62 from Yucca Valley, the speed limit sticks to 55 miles per hour and drops to 45 around Juniper Road, then 35 miles per hour throughout Joshua Tree until it picks back up again as you head east.
The last speed limit change for the Joshua Tree village was in 2014 when Caltrans dropped the speed limit to 45, down from 55. That speed limit change was due to a Caltrans speed survey that found that 85 percent of the cars driving through the area were going around 51 or slower.
On June 29, 2026 Caltrans announced that it received approximately $1.4 million in grant funding from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) to help expand and improve traffic data collection on the state highway system. In that press release, Caltrans says they analyze a wide variety of data sets to help evaluate road safety, including lane conditions, intersection and shoulder types, traffic controls, speed limits and traffic volumes.
We reached out to Caltrans on the reason for the recent speed limit change, but they declined to provide any information on the speed limit change without a public records request.
The downtown Joshua Tree area can be extra busy with pedestrians crossing the four lane highway between the north and south sides of Highway 62. In December of last year, $31 million dollars was set aside by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors for Third District projects – including crosswalks, traffic and pedestrian signals, bathrooms and trash facilities.