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    Rancho Mirage
    Rancho Mirage
    Rancho Mirage
    Ebook207 pages58 minutes

    Rancho Mirage

    By Leo A. Mallette

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    Rancho Mirage is a beautiful residential and desert-resort community nestled along the Santa Rosa Mountains, located between the cities of Palm Springs and Palm Desert in the Coachella Valley. Bighorn sheep and the Agua Caliente tribe of Cahuilla Indians were the area's early inhabitants. Date farms and ranchos developed after aquifers were discovered. Guest ranches soon followed and became favorite destinations for the rich and famous in the 1940s and 1950s. By the early 1950s, residential communities designed in classic Desert Modern style were being constructed along with the valley's first two country clubs with 18-hole golf courses. Rancho Mirage soon emerged as the "golf capital of the world" and has since grown to be a premier resort and residential community with a permanent population of 16,870 and several thousand additional winter residents who enjoy the city's 10 country clubs, three world-class resorts, and scores of restaurants.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439639320
    Rancho Mirage
    Author

    Leo A. Mallette

    Dr. Leo Mallette has been an aerospace engineer for 33 years and is a faculty member at Pepperdine University. He and his wife, Kathy, live in Irvine and Rancho Mirage. The photographs in this book come from individuals, organizations, foundations, country club files, and the City of Rancho Mirage.

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      Book preview

      Rancho Mirage - Leo A. Mallette

      pictures.

      INTRODUCTION

      Rancho Mirage has not always been a low-density, high-quality resort town with the greatest golf courses in the world. Millennia ago, the San Andreas Fault pushed up the Indio Hills to the north of Rancho Mirage. The southern end of Rancho Mirage is part of a crustal tilt-block that was formed when the earth’s crust was uplifted; the highest section of the crust became the Santa Rosa Mountains, and the lowest section formed the bottom of the valley near Thousand Palms. The northern portion of the East Pacific Rise spreading center formed the Peninsular Ranges of Alta (upper) California (now Southern California) from Riverside to the tip of Baja (lower) California, Mexico. The East Pacific Rise is a mid-oceanic ridge that separates the Pacific Plate from the North American Plate in the Gulf of California. Its northern end terminates around the beginning of the San Andreas Fault, near the Salton Sea. The Coachella Valley was formed when the East Pacific Rise rifted the Pacific Plate from the North American Plate and separated part of Southern California and all of Baja Mexico from the bulk of North America. This rift formed a large inland sea about five million years ago that extended from Indio into the Gulf of California. Baja is still moving north-northwest, away from mainland Mexico, at one to three inches per year. Erosion caused the valley to be filled with alluvial rock and sand, while silt from the Colorado River created a delta that eventually reached the western side of the Gulf of California and helped to fill the far southern end of the Coachella Valley and by extension the Imperial Valley. This delta isolated the valley from the Gulf of California and formed the Salton Sink.

      Crossing the Bering land bridge from Siberia, the ancestors of today’s bighorn sheep lived in the mountains of Canada and migrated south to the United States and Northern Mexico. The City of Rancho Mirage adopted the head of a bighorn ram as part of its city logo. The Peninsular bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) ranges from the mountains above Palm Springs to the Santa Rosalia area of Baja Mexico. They are low-elevation sheep, living primarily in ranges from 400 to 4,000 feet above sea level; this makes them more likely to come into contact with humans. The sheep were in danger of extinction due to several factors associated with civilization. Adult sheep being hit by cars and lambs drowning in swimming pools were two of the factors leading to their being placed on the endangered species list in 2004 and the building of the 4.5-mile-long Rancho Mirage safety fence in 2003. The US population of Peninsular bighorn sheep was approximately 1,200 in the 1970s but dwindled to 280 in 1996 and has steadily increased to approximately 850 in 2010.

      Erosion and time created the alluvial fans that filled the valley and formed the base for several communities like Rancho Mirage, with the Whitewater River cutting a path from the Little San Bernardino Mountains to the ancient Lake Cahuilla or, more recently, the Salton Sea. Historically, the lower Colorado River changed its course and filled the Salton Sink, forming Lake Cahuilla. The lake filled the valley to 42 feet (13 meters) above sea level, 265 feet above the current level of the Salton Sea, which is 226 feet (69 meters) below sea level. The upper level of Lake Cahuilla’s shoreline can still be seen on the hills of the Santa Rosa Mountains (photograph on page 12) near the Salton Sea. Water levels rose and fell over the centuries, and recorded floods filled the bottom of the Salton Sink nine times from 1828 to 1899. Native Americans came to the valley, mountains, and Lake Cahuilla over 2,000 years ago. The Agua Caliente Indians are one of several independent groups of the Cahuilla tribe. In the winter of 1862–1863, they were nearly decimated by smallpox. In recent years, they have established a casino and hotel within Rancho Mirage’s city limits.

      The Coco-Mariposa Trail is an ancient Halchidhoma Indian trade route that follows the springs and water holes along the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains. Part of this route is now California Highway 111. This trail ran from the Pacific coast to at least central Arizona. Native American paths through the desert were used for food, water, trade, and religious purposes for centuries. Evidence for an ancient trail to the Colorado River exists due to the introduction of pottery to the Cahuilla tribes from the Colorado River tribes about 1,000 years ago. The Spanish knew about the Coco-Mariposa Trail in the 1820s, because the padres at the San Gabriel Mission would send messages via Native American runners along the footpath to the main mission in Tucson, Arizona.

      Mexico (including California) gained independence from Spain in 1821, and the territory of Alta (upper) California was ceded by Mexico to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Coincidentally, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill that same year. The news percolated east; the California Gold Rush began in 1849 (prospectors were called forty-niners), and California became a state in 1850. The Coachella Valley was surveyed for the first time in 1853 to identify a rail route to the Mississippi River. Small, fossilized mollusk shells had been found throughout the area, and the valley has been shown on maps as Coahuilla Valley in the north, Cabesone Valley in the south, or sometimes Conchilla (the Spanish word for a small seashell) Valley. One story is that the present Coachella name was chosen in a 1901 meeting as a contraction of COAhuilla and ConCHILLA, but with the suffix changed to ella to make the name (COA-CHELLA) easier to pronounce.

      William Bradshaw rediscovered the Coco-Mariposa Trail in 1862 with the help of a map provided by Old Cabazon (chief of the Cahuilla Indians) and a Coco-Mariposa Trail Indian mail-runner. The route was improved, and the Bradshaw Stagecoach line followed the Bradshaw Trail from San Bernardino through the San Gorgonio Pass, along the Whitewater River and the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains, through Rancho Mirage, to the northern tip of the Salton Sink, then east to Bradshaw’s ferry service across the Colorado River and on to the goldfields at La Paz (now Ehrenberg), Arizona. The Bradshaw Trail was the main route to the Colorado River until the Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) Railroad track was completed in 1876. In the Coachella Valley, the Bradshaw Trail was graded and graveled in 1910, crudely paved in 1915, and became known as the Bradshaw Highway.

      Artesian water was discovered close to the surface, allowing ranchos to be developed. Crops including alfalfa, grapes, apricots, citrus, figs, and dates were grown in the area. The federal government promoted date farming,

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