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Palm
Springs
In a letter to a friend in 1914, the widow of famed author Robert Louis
Stevenson wrote, "There is ... a climate of extraordinary purity
and dry ness, and almost no rain or wind. Wonderful cures . . . have taken
place here ... if I had only known of Palm Springs in my Louis's rime!"
In those
early days, weak-lunged patients gathered in tents amidst the palm groves,
and there was no notion that the city of today—a place of glamour,
golf, and dozens of restaurants, all grilling New York steaks and pouring
big healthy shots ofJohnnie Walker Red Label—might ever exist.
The first big boom hit in the 1920s. Bungalow courts and small motels
sprang up, along with a few larger resorts. The Hollywood crowd swept
in to vacation in the glorious, dry winter heat, arriving in auto mobiles
that could negotiate the improving road system linking L.A. to
such a formerly remote location. Some of these old lodgings remain, as
do others from sub-sequent booms in the 1950s and 1960s, when Sinatra,
Hope, President Eisenhower, Liz Taylor, and a host of other big names
kept P.S. in the limelight. But by the 1980s Palm Springs was dying, and
its reputation had taken a serious drubbing from wild Spring Break weeks,
when thousands of students arrived to party. Most of the fine stores abandoned
downtown (Palm Desert became the new mecca for shopping and galleries),
leaving it to the T-shirt and curio shops, Today Palm Springs is "hot,
hot, hot!" as Vanity Fair magazine trumpeted in their June 1999 issue.
The celebrities are back. Hipsters have discovered Palm Springs as an
enclave of 1950s architecture, much of it by internationally acclaimed
Southern California design masters like Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler.
As you tour Palm Springs and the surrounding region's major attractions
and other communities, keep the notion of "down-valley" in mind:
residents think of Palm Springs as being at the head of the Coachella
Valley, and other desert communities to the southeast are all down-valley
from here. A big chunk (32,000 acres) of Palm Springs is owned by the
AGUA CALIENTE INDIANS; the entrance to their reservation and three spectacular
palm canyons open to hikers is 4 miles south of Palm Springs on S Palm
Canyon Drive (760/325-3400). ANDREAS, MURRAY, and PALM CANYONS offer huge
granite formations, water-polished rock, rushing
streams and quiet pools, and Washingtonia palms—the hardy survivors
from 10,000-plus years ago, when the climate here was much wetter. The
PALM SPRINGS AERIAL TRAMWAY (760/325-1391) takes you high into MOUNT SAN
JACINTO STATE PARK (760/659-2607) from its station on Tramway Road off
Highway 111. The park features 54 miles of HIKING and BACKPACKING TRAILS
in summer, and a more modest set of CROSS-
COUNTRY SKIING and SNOWSHOEING TRAILS in winter when snow blankets the
area (air temperatures at the top are often as much as 40 degrees lower
than at the valley floor). You can RENT EQUIPMENT at the tram station's
Nordic Ski Center (760/327-6002) when you arrive at the top. A ride-and-dine
option includes a sunset dinner at the tram's mountaintop restaurant,
followed by a spectacular descent beneath a night sky so dark and clear
the Milky Way really does look like spilled milk. In town, MOORTEN BOTANICAL
GARDENS (1701 S Palm Canyon Drive; 760/327-6555) houses over 3,000 varieties
of desert plants (cactus
lovers, rejoice). Paintings, sculpture, and Native American artifacts
as well as the natural sciences are showcased in the big-city-sophisticated
PALM SPRINGS DESERT MUSEUM (101 Museum Drive; 760/325-0189 or 760/325-7186),
which rests in a deep well of landscaped sculpture gardens set up against
the mountainside. The Annenberg Theater on the
museum's ground floor hosts concerts, drama, film, and dance.
The GALLERY, SHOPPING, AND RESTAURANT SCENE along S Palm Canyon Drive,
which runs north-south between Amado Road and Ramon Road, saw a dramatic
turnaround in the late 1990s. Don't miss Thursday night here, when the
street closes to car traffic and artists and other vendors set up booths
for a huge open-air market. Relatively new SHOPPING DEVELOPMENTS on S
Palm Canyon that shouldn't be missed include the Vineyard (corner of Baristo
Road and Palm Springs Promenade). Winning the award for Oddest Element
amidst this hubbub has to be VILLAGE GREEN HERITAGE CENTER (221 S Palm
Canyon Drive;
760/323-8297). Operated by the Palm Springs Historical Society, the Heritage
Center surrounds a minipark with its array of several old buildings, including
the McCallum Adobe (1884) and "Miss Cornelia's Little House,"
made of railroad ties. Interiors are faithfully redone, and a modestly
priced ticket also gains you admission to a museum of Palm Springs history.
The historic PLAZA THEATRE (128 S Indian Canyon Drive; 760/327-0225) hosts
the long-running Fabulous Palm Springs Follies from November through May.
Depending on their age, patrons think the show is either swell or pure
blue-haired camp.
Toward the mountains, the HERITAGE DISTRICT (called by locals "the
tennis club district") features a concentration of small hotels,
inns, and bed and breakfasts, many of them with a retro feeling. Visitors
staying in this neighborhood can walk to Palm Canyon Drive, or stroll
in the other direction toward the mountains and pick up a hiking trail
that rambles over the wild desert mountainside.
Other outdoor activity options include HOT-AIR BALLOONING with Dream Flights
(launch sites vary; 760/321-5154) and TOURING THE WINDMILL FARMS with
Wind Farm Tours, Inc. (62-950 20th Avenue; 760/251-1997). Desert Adventures
(760/324-JEEP or 888/440-JEEP) offers JEEP AND HIKING TOURS of surrounding
desert lands to see remote canyons, wildflowers, and geological wonders.
And outside town, the PALM SPRINGS AIR MUSEUM (745 N Gene Autry Trail;
760/778-6262) takes advantage of the dry desert air to preserve some of
the world's last examples of still-operable World War II aircraft, including
the famous Flying Fortress with its ball turret nose. For an overview
of Palm Springs area events and activities, contact the VISITOR INFORMATION
CENTER (2781 N Palm Canyon Drive, at the north edge of the city, just
south of the turnoff to the aerial tramway; 760/778-8418 or 800/347-7746,
www.Palm-Springs.org).
THOSE WONDERFUL "MOP TOPS"
Stand on the floor of the Coachella Valley wrth your feet firmly
planted on a sidewalk:
in Palm Springs, Look south toward the San Jacinto Mountains.
Forbidding, no? A mas-
sive pile of crushed rock, barely able to sustain life? True,
and not so true, for no plant
symbolizes the opportune nature of desert flora more than the
noble native fan palm
(Washingtonia filffera) found in the many folded canyons of the
San Jacinto and Santa
Rosa Mountains. Here, usually hidden from viewto everyone but
hikers, the palms send
down their thirsty roots toward subterranean year-round springs.
'
In winter these same canyons come to life with roaring freshets.
And out on the
desert floor, a few oases such as Thousand Palms also sustain
these rustling 50-foot.tall::
trees. As you walk among them, look closely for the many inhabitants
of and visitors to :
these wildlife "condominiums"—especially tree
frogs, and birds such as hooded orioles.
Some palms wear "skirts" of dead fronds down much of
their trunk length. If a palm is :
naked, it was probably the victim of sparks from a campfire or
vandalism.
To experience a few classic palm groves, consider a hike to Murray
Canyon on the :
Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. To get there, go south on Highway
111 from down-
town Palm Springs following signs to Indian Canyons. Pay a small
fee at the reservation's
entry station, and continue on to Andreas Canyon, where you can
park and hike less ;
than a mile into Murray Canyon. Within the reservation, you can
also visit Palm Canyon,:
where about 3,000 palms line a 7-mile stretch of canyon.
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