Coachella Valley (other)

, map_image = Wpdms shdrlfi020l coachella valley.jpg
, map_caption = Coachella Valley
, location = Riverside County, California, United States
, coordinates =
, width =
, boundaries = Salton Sea (southeast), Santa Rosa Mountains (southwest), San Jacinto Mountains (west), Little San Bernardino Mountains (east), San Gorgonio Mountain (north)
, towns = Indio, Palm Springs, Palm Desert
, traversed = Interstate 10

The Coachella Valley ( ) is an arid rift valley in the Colorado Desert of Southern California in Riverside County. The valley has been referred to as Greater Palm Springs and occasionally the Palm Springs Area due to the historic prominence of the city of Palm Springs. The valley extends approximately southeast from the San Gorgonio Pass to the northern shore of the Salton Sea and the neighboring Imperial Valley, and is approximately wide along most of its length. It is bounded on the northeast by the San Bernardino and Little San Bernardino Mountains, and on the southwest by the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains.

The Coachella Valley is notable as the location of several wintertime resort cities that have become popular destinations for full time retirees and seasonal residents known as snowbirds. The valley is also known for a number of annual events, including the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Stagecoach Country Music Festival, and the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival, all held in Indio. Other events include the Palm Springs Modernism Week, Palm Springs International Film Festival, the ANA Inspiration and Desert Classic golf tournaments, and the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament.

The Coachella Valley is home to the cities of Cathedral City, Coachella, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, Indio, La Quinta, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Rancho Mirage.

Summers in the valley are extremely hot and valley winters are mild. As such, the valley's population tends to fluctuate; from nearly 500,000 in April, to around 300,000 in July and August, to around 600,000 by January. It was stated by the Riverside County HR Department that "Palm Springs and the Desert Communities" were being visited by 3.5 million conventioneers and tourists annually.

The Coachella Valley connects with the Greater Los Angeles area to the west via the San Gorgonio Pass, a major transportation corridor, traversed by Interstate 10 and by the Union Pacific Railroad. The valley is considered part of the Low Desert and is included within the Desert Empire to differentiate it from the broader Inland Empire of Southern California.

History

The area had been surveyed by Edward Fitzgerald Beale in 1857, whose survey party used camels to cross the desert, primarily along the path of the historic Bradshaw Trail. It was not until the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad and the discovery of abundant artesian wells later in the 19th century that the area began to expand.

The coming in 1926 of U.S. Route 99 northward through Coachella and Indio and westward toward Los Angeles, more or less along the present route of Interstate 10, helped further open agriculture, commerce and tourism to the rest of the country. So too did the coming of State Highway 111 in the early 1930s, which cut a diagonal swath through the valley and connected all of its major settlements. Dr. June McCarroll, then a nurse with the Southern Pacific whose office fronted U.S. 99 in Indio, is credited with being the first person to delineate a divided highway by painting a stripe down the middle of the roadbed in response to frequent head-on collisions. The standard was refined and adopted worldwide. Doctor McCarroll is memorialized by a stretch of I-10 through Indio named in her honor.

The Coachella Valley became popular among celebrities from Frank Sinatra to Dakota Fanning who came to enjoy vacations and winter homes in the desert resort community. It became a real estate destination in the 1980s and 1990s and has also become a tourist destination.

Geography

The Coachella Valley is the northernmost extent of the vast Salton Trough, also called the Cahuilla Basin, which includes the Salton Sea, and the Imperial Valley in the United States, as well as the Mexicali Valley and Colorado River Delta in Mexico. The trough is a result of combined tectonic activity of the San Andreas Fault, which follows the northeastern side of the valley, and the East Pacific Rise that runs up through the Gulf of California to the Salton Sea.

The area is surrounded on the southwest by the Santa Rosa Mountains, by the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, the Little San Bernardino Mountains to the east and San Gorgonio Mountain to the north. These mountains peak at around and tend to average between . Elevations on the valley floor range from above sea level at the north end of the Valley to below sea level around Mecca.

The San Andreas Fault traverses the valley's east side. Because of this fault, the valley has many hot springs. The Santa Rosa Mountains to the west are part of the Elsinore Fault Zone. The results of a prehistoric sturzstrom can be seen in Martinez Canyon. The Painted Canyons of Mecca feature smaller faults as well as Precambrian, Tertiary and Quaternary rock formations, unconformities, badlands and desert landforms. Fault lines cause hot water springs or geysers to rise from the ground. These natural water sources made habitation and development possible in the otherwise inhospitable desert environment of the Coachella Valley. Major earthquakes have affected the Coachella Valley. For instance, the 1992 Landers earthquake caused some damage in the valley. An earthquake of local origin which caused considerable damage was the 1986 North Palm Springs earthquake, which registered at a magnitude of 6.0, injuring 29 people and destroying 51 homes.

Climate

In the summer months daytime temperatures range from to and nighttime lows from to . During winter, the daytime temperatures range from to and corresponding nights range from to making it a popular winter resort destination. The surrounding mountains create Thermal Belts in the immediate foothills of the Coachella Valley, leading to higher night-time temperatures in the winter months, and lower daytime temps during the summer months. Due to its warm year-round climate the region's agricultural sector produces fruits such as mangoes, figs and dates.

The valley is the northwestern extension of the Sonoran Desert to the southeast, and as such, is extremely arid. Most precipitation falls during the winter months from passing mid-latitude frontal systems from the north and west, nearly all of it as rain, but with snow atop the surrounding mountains. Rain also falls during the summer months as surges of moisture from both the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California are drawn into the area by the desert monsoon. Occasionally, the remnants of a Pacific tropical cyclone can also affect the valley. In 1976, Tropical Storm Kathleen brought torrential rain and catastrophic flooding to the Coachella Valley as it swept in from the Pacific, traversing the region from south to north. A haboob powerful enough to have a significant impact on the Coachella Valley can happen every two years.

Ecology

This desert environment hosts a variety of flora and fauna, including the endangered California Fan Palm, ''Washingtonia filifera'', Bighorn sheep inhabit the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountain ranges as well as the fringe-toed lizard, an indigenous desert reptile whose numbers are increasing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Desert wildlife in the Coachella Valley includes localized subspecies of ants, bats, beetles, blackbirds, bobcats, coyotes, fleas, foxes, gnats, gophers, hawks, horseflies, jackrabbits, kangaroo rats, mosquitoes, mountain lions, pigeons, quails, rattlesnakes, ravens, roaches, roadrunners, scorpions, spiders, termites, ticks, wasps, whip scorpions or "vinegaroons", and wildcats.

See also:
* Geography of the Colorado Desert
* Fauna of the Colorado Desert
* Sonoran Desert wildflowers
* Coachella Valley Jerusalem Cricket

Demographics

As a retirement haven throughout the area's history, a large percentage of residents are age 65 or older. The valley has some of the densest concentrations of senior citizens in California with three of California’s cities with the highest percentages of residents age 65 and older: Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage, and Palm Desert. Though the area is somewhat politically conservative, it is also home to a sizeable LGBT population; current estimates are that up to 33% of Palm Springs' residents identify as gay and lesbian, and Cathedral City is also home to a number of gay resorts, bars, restaurants and clubs. Many establishments along a stretch of Arenas Road in downtown Palm Springs are gay-oriented and serve as the center of the annual White Party. According to an interview with former Palm Springs mayor Ron Oden, perhaps at the time the United States' only openly gay African-American mayor, a large number of people living with HIV (PWH) have moved to the Palm Springs area to take advantage of the extensive health-support systems that have been developed in recent years (such as DAP Health). For this reason, the area has one of the highest per capita rates of HIV in the nation.

The area has a large percentage of Mexican American political figures, plus the state assembly representative Bonnie Garcia of La Quinta is of Puerto Rican parentage.

The Coachella Valley was settled by a diverse array of races and ethnicities. Once viewed as predominantly Caucasian, the Coachella Valley has features of a diverse history. As of 2004, the Claritas study found that 373,100 people resided in the region. The racial makeup was 44.7% Non-Hispanic White, 49.9% Hispanic, 1.8% Black/African American, 2.1% Asian/Pacific Islander, 0.4% American Indian and Inuit, 0.1% from other races, and 1.1% from two or more races.

Early history

In the early 20th century, less than 1,000 full-time residents lived in the "village" of Palm Springs, surrounding farms and ranches, and on the Indian reservation. The 1930 U.S. census found less than half the Coachella Valley's population was "white", the rest were Mexicans especially in the eastern ends when traqueros arrived to maintain the area's railroads, and Native Americans of local tribes in what were then impoverished reservations.

Starting in the 1890s, there was a large Irish and Scottish presence in the region, after Palm Springs was an established agricultural colony called "Palm Valley" cofounded by Welwood Murray, a Scottish immigrant and John Guthrie McCallum, an American from the U.S. East Coast. The two men widely advertised the colony to settlers with an interest in a warm climate and the ideal winter residence.

Hispanic community

Hispanic Americans are long established in Palm Springs' central and eastern sections, and have constituted the majority of the populations of Indio and Coachella for many decades. In the 2000 U.S. census, about 35 percent of Coachella Valley residents were Latino. But according to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, an estimated half (50–60 percent) of the residents are Latino. A large portion of Latinos moving into the area are from the Los Angeles-Orange County and San Diego metro areas.

Most of the valley's Hispanics are Mexican from a multi-generational community (see Chicano), but Central American immigrants (especially in Indio and Cathedral City), Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans, and South Americans are also numerous (esp. in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert). Since the late 1980s, the large wave of immigration from neighboring Mexico has culturally impacted the Coachella Valley in many more ways than the rest of California or the country, but the national trend slowed down due to the late 2000s recession.

Most Hispanic immigrants came to obtain work in the area's year-round agriculture, but today many find employment in construction and home remodeling, the resort hospitality industry, landscaping firms, and retail.

Other racial/ethnic groups

The prominence of Native Americans of the Cahuilla tribe is represented in local life; because of casino gambling and land ownership, the majority of local tribal members (Cahuilla pertaining to the Agua Caliente band and the Cabazon/Twentynine Palms bands) are in upper-income brackets. According to the Southern California National Congress of American Indians, less than 5 percent of the area's residents are Native Americans.

African Americans are concentrated in Palm Springs' northern and eastern ends, as well as in small sections of Indio and Desert Hot Springs, but local African Americans live everywhere in middle-class and wealthy areas and comprise less than 5 percent of the local population. The area is home to 10,000 Indian Americans (mostly from Sri Lanka), descendants of agricultural workers in the 1930s and 1940s. Additionally, Palm Desert is the home of 1,000 Tahitians, a Pacific Islander people from French Polynesia.

Other ethnic groups in the area like Asian Americans (i.e. Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos), followed by a small wave of Armenians and Arabs (esp. Lebanese and Syrians) from the Middle East were involved in the area's agriculture in the early 1900s. In recent years, the area (especially Palm Desert and Palm Springs) became popular for Iranian, Israeli, East Indian, Yugoslav (Former) and Korean home buyers, with most purchasing increasingly high-valued properties for investment purposes.

Local emphasis of tolerance

In mid-2000, Palm Springs city officials and business leaders discussed making an unofficial declaration of Palm Springs as a "hate-free zone" as a sign of local pride to celebrate the city's tolerance (Palm Springs, especially in ''The Advocate'' magazine that caters to gay and lesbian readership, has voted it as one of the top five most popular world places for the gay/lesbian community) and multicultural diversity of the city's relaxed attitude regarding many races living close together. According to the Palm Springs Pride LGBT association poll and census data in 2010, an estimated 40–45 percent of Palm Springs' residents are thought to be LGBT and nearby Cathedral City is about one-quarter, each having above averages of LGBT people for a U.S. city.

Religious life

Many faiths and denominations are represented in the area. Protestants and Catholics are the most numerous. According to the Jewish Federation of the Desert based in Palm Springs, the Coachella Valley has one of California's largest Jewish communities, estimated at 35,000, a result of being a major retirement destination and connections to the Hollywood film industry. There has also been a sizable Latter-Day Saints community since the early 1900s, with three stakes, formerly branches, which experienced rapid growth. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints form a large population in the Inland Empire and High Desert regions. The Islamic Society of the Coachella Valley has a mosque in the city of Coachella.

Communities and population

The Coachella Valley contains nine cities and several unincorporated communities.

The incorporated cities of the Coachella Valley had a population of approximately 370,000 at the 2020 Census. State projections estimate that the valley's population will pass 1 million by 2066. Demographers believe the total population already surpassed the 500,000 mark, plus 100,000 temporary seasonal residents known as "snowbirds" arriving to stay during the winter months (from the end of October to the end of April).

The city of Palm Springs sits at the northwest end of the valley. Unincorporated areas and towns include Cabazon in the San Gorgonio Pass, and Bermuda Dunes and Thousand Palms in the east end of the valley. Others include Carver Tract, a county island between the cities of Indio and Coachella, Indio Hills, Sky Valley, North Palm Springs and Garnet along the northern rim along with Thermal, Vista Santa Rosa, Oasis and Mecca to the southeast. The native Cahuilla tribe represented in the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, Twentynine Palms Band of Mission Indians, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and the Torres-Martinez Band of Cahuilla Indians, the Mission Creek Band in unincorporated Painted Hills, and the Santa Rosa Indian Reservation south of Palm Desert, each have reservations in the area.

Economy

Agriculture

The irrigation of over of the Valley since the early 20th century has allowed widespread agriculture. In its 2006 annual report, the Coachella Valley Water District listed the year's total crop value at over $576 million or almost $12,000 per acre. As of 2010 the valley produced agricultural products worth about $600 million.

The valley is the primary date-growing region in the United States, responsible for nearly 95 percent of the nation's crop and is celebrated each year in Indio during the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival. The earliest attempt at growing dates came about in 1890 when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) imported date palm shoots from Iraq and Egypt. Sixty-eight shoots were distributed across the Southwest U.S. in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Yuma, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, and several California cites: Indio, Pomona near Los Angeles, Tulare and National City near San Diego. The imports were almost all male seedlings and produced poor fruit. The Coachella Valley showed promise, so USDA horticulturist Bernard Johnson planted a number of shoots that he brought back from Algeria in September 1903. On his own initiative, Johnson imported more shoots from Algeria in 1908 and again in 1912. The area's entire date industry can be traced back to those original USDA experiments near present-day Mecca. Date palms were grown from present-day Cathedral City to the Salton Sea, but most date groves were overtaken by development by the 1990s. Today nearly all of the date groves are in the "East Valley" area south of Indio, near Coachella and east of La Quinta.

Other agricultural products cultivated in the Coachella Valley include fruits and vegetables, especially table grapes, citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit; onions and leeks; and peppers. The valley floor served to grow bounties of alfalfa, artichokes, avocados, beans, beets, cabbage, carrots, corn, cotton, cucumbers, dandelions (salad greens), eggplant, figs, grains (i.e. barley, oats, rye and wheat; plus rice fields kept wet or moist in the Salton Sea area), hops, kohlrabi, lettuce, mangoes, nectarines and peaches, persimmons, plums and prunes, pomegranate, potatoes, radishes, spinach, strawberries, sugar cane, tomatoes, a variety of herbs and spices, and other vegetable crops. The Coachella grapefruit originated in the region. The city of Coachella is the primary shipping point for agricultural goods. Domesticated grasses, flowers and trees are widely grown for warm-weather or desert climates, and sold for use in golf courses and landscape.

Only 10 percent of the Coachella Valley residents were born/raised in the area, according to the 2000 census, a much lower percentage than found in most parts of the U.S. Agriculture is a founding block of the majority of the residents whose parents and grandparents came to the area as farmers and laborers transformed the eastern parts of the valley from a hot sandy desert into a fertile place with a year-round growing season. The Coachella Valley's agricultural development is due to irrigation: water was drawn from an underground aquifer created when the valley was under a fresh water lake in the last ice age (over 10,000 years ago); and from the Coachella Canal, a concrete-lined aqueduct built between 1938 and 1948 as a branch of the All-American Canal, which brings water from the Colorado River to the Valley. The Colorado River Aqueduct, which provides drinking water to Los Angeles and San Diego, crosses the northeast end of the Valley along the base of the Little San Bernardino Mountains (the Joshua Tree National Park). Recent growth of fish farming or aquaculture in Mecca near the Salton Sea brings new promise to the local economy, especially to efforts to restore the ailing ecology of the large saltwater lake.

Wind power

The valley's northwest entrance from the San Bernardino-Riverside along Interstate 10 is known as the San Gorgonio Pass and is the second windiest place in the country. Cool coastal air is forced through the pass and mixes with the hot desert air, making the San Gorgonio Pass one of only three ideal places in California for steady, wind-generated electricity. At the San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm, thousands of huge wind turbines spread across the desert and hills on either side of the highway greet visitors as they approach the crest of the pass and have become somewhat of a symbol of the area. The state's other wind farms are in the Tehachapi Pass between Mojave and Bakersfield and in the Altamont Pass near Livermore.

Businesses

* Siemens Water Technologies, Palm Desert – manufacturer of industrial water filtration systems.
* Guthy-Renker, Palm Desert – producer of mail order infomercials.
* Ernie Ball, manufacturer of electric guitar strings, opened a manufacturing facility in Coachella in 2005.
* Shields Date Gardens, date producer – a local landmark and tourist attraction since 1924.
* Coca-Cola bottling plant facility in Coachella – opened in 2009 and employs 1,000 people.
* Eisenhower Medical Center, opened in 1971, is a 540-bed hospital with in-patient facilities, emergency department, and out-patient clinics and urgent care centers. Eisenhower employs approximately 2800 people.

Recreation and annual activities

With warm winters and more than 350 days of sunshine per year, recreational hiking and horseback riding are popular in the many canyons in the mountains that surround the valley. Thousand Palms Canyon is a popular destination, amongst many.

The Coachella Valley was once a safe haven for hay fever allergy sufferers before the surge of golf courses and year-round lawns, and people with bronchitis, emphysema and asthma chose to relocate for health reasons in the early half of the 20th century.

In the early 20th century, the town of Palm Springs was ideal for an agricultural economy. Today, many of the fields and groves of the desert cities were replaced by homes and golf courses. Agriculture thrived in the eastern or lower part of the Coachella Valley in Indio, Coachella, Thermal, Mecca, and Oasis thanks in part to a large underground aquifer to sustain a year-round green environment.

Roughly 125 golf courses blanket the area, making it one of the world's premier golf destinations and the most popular golf vacation destination in California. The Merrill Lynch Skins Game was held in La Quinta each Thanksgiving and drew some of the biggest names in golf. The PGA has a major presence in La Quinta as well with the PGA WEST golf and residential complex. One of the host courses of the aforementioned Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, a PGA WEST fairway represents the area in Soarin' Over California, an IMAX-based attraction at Disney California Adventure Park theme park.

The area is also dotted with casinos owned by the local Indian tribes. As of 2024, there are six standalone casinos in the Coachella Valley. The valley is home to resort hotels built around spas with natural mineral water wells, specifically in Desert Hot Springs. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway takes visitors from the valley floor to the San Jacinto Peak mountain station above sea level.

Palm Springs is home to one of the country's largest collections of mid-century architecture. Thousands of homes, apartments, hotels, businesses and other buildings were designed in this fashion across the city. International mid-century enthusiasts come to Palm Springs to admire the design.

Events, activities and attractions

Changing exhibits of sculptures can be found along El Paseo Drive in Palm Desert.

Palm Springs has the annual Palm Springs International Film Festival every January and the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival (or ShortFest