About Palm Springs

Palm Springs is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 55 miles (89 kilometers) east of San Bernardino, 107 miles (172 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, 123 miles (198 kilometers) northeast of San Diego, and 268 miles (431 kilometers) west of Phoenix, Arizona. The population was 44,552 at the 2010 census. The city spans over 94 square miles, making it the largest city in the county by size.

Golf, swimming, tennis, horseback riding, biking, and hiking in the nearby desert and mountain areas are major forms of recreation in Palm Springs.

Archaeological research has shown that the Cahuilla people have lived in the area for the past 350–500 years. The Cahuilla name for the area was "Se-Khi" (boiling water). When the Agua Caliente Reservation was established by the United States government in 1896, the reservation land was composed of alternating sections (640 acres) of land laid out across the desert in a checkerboard pattern. The alternating, non-reservation sections, were granted to the Southern Pacific Railroad as an incentive to bring rail lines through the open desert.

The city became a fashionable resort in the 1900s when health tourists arrived with conditions that required dry heat. In 1906 naturalist and travel writer George Wharton James' two volume The Wonders of the Colorado Desert described Palm Springs as having "great charms and attractiveness and included an account of his stay at Murray's hotel. As James also described, Palm Springs was more comfortable in its microclimate because the area was covered in the shadow of Mount San Jacinto to the west and in the winter the mountains block cold winds from the San Gorgonio pass. Early illustrious visitors included John Muir and his daughters, U.S. Vice President Charles Fairbanks, and Fanny Stevenson, widow of Robert Louis Stevenson; still, Murray's hotel was closed in 1909 and torn down in 1954. Nellie N. Coffman and her physician husband Harry established The Desert Inn as a hotel and sanitarium in 1909; it was expanded as a modern hotel in 1927 and continued on until 1967.