Desert Hot Springs was founded in 1940 but was not incorporated until 23 years later. .
The opening of the first Commercial Bath House, Swimming pool and sale of property occurred on July 12, 1941.
In that year, there was very little in this part of the desert that you could actually call a town. Old timer Jesse McGhee recalls arriving here on August 2, 1941. “We pulled into town, drove around and we found two people here, “Mama” Dodd and the young caretaker at Chandler’s Ranch,” he recalls. “August 3 and 4 nobody came into town but on August 5, Lane Crosley came in here to work on his house on 7th Street.”
That same month, August 28, 1941, Homer Stuart set up his printing press on the front porch of his house on Pierson Blvd., protected the press with an umbrella from a summer rainstorm and printed the very first edition of the Desert Sentinel. [newspaper] The year was 1941 and still, with all the activity about the town, there was little actually here.
L.W. Coffey first had to construct streets to give the impression that a town was about to be built as his prospective customers arrived here from the city.
His first half-mile square tract bordered on Palm, Pierson, 8th and West. Heavy equipment rumbled east on Pierson to a shale quarry Coffee found at what is now the bend in Pierson Boulevard at Miracle Hill. *(Desert Sentinel files)
Within the next five years, we would see Haidet Hardware, founded by Ruth and John Haidet in 1945. In that same year came Desert Hot Springs Drug Store on Palm Drive.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There were pioneers here who settled this area and were originally responsible for the town becoming the attraction that it was to become.
In the Beginning
The adventurous story of Desert Hot Springs often begins with Cabot Yerxa. But there were other homesteaders in this valley long before Cabot got here.
Not to minimize Cabot’s role at all, but living out here in these desert sands in those days after the turn of the century were a hearty, crusty bunch of men and women. Without automobiles, they depended on the original “horsepower” to get them to a supply of drinking water at Garnet and for their weekly or monthly supplies.
There was no town here, of course, in those days around 1920. The Southern Pacific Railroad stopped over at Garnet, near what is now the intersection of Interstate 10 and Indian Avenue. There was a large train station there with a restaurant, a ticket counter, a baggage claim and a buggy service to take visitors to Palm Springs.
But on this side of the valley, only a few pioneers homesteaded their land and braved the heat, the winds and the rainstorms.
Cabot Yerxa was broke and looking for homestead land when he wandered into a bar in Banning in 1913 and was told of an old watering hole that existed in this part of the desert. Without enough money for a burro, Yerxa hiked from Banning to here and heard from an old Indian about the “devil spring”, the water that came out of the ground hot at a spot government surveyors nicknamed “Two Bunch Palms.”
Determined to prove up his own quarter section of land, Cabot stepped off his 160 acres, built himself a shelter he called “Eagle’s Nest” and started his search for water.
He and another desert pioneer, Bill Riley began digging a well, a shaft only 24 inches by 32 inches wide and at 24 feet, water began seeping into the hole. Yerxa stood in two cool bucketsful of water as he dug. On one side of his property the water came in at 132 degrees; on the other side, the water was cool.
“It’s a miracle!” he exclaimed and named his homestead spot “Miracle Hill”.
Proving up his land and building a small, comfortable living structure, Yerxa enjoyed his hearty life in the desert and even tried to interest Palm Springs bankers in the development of this area as a resort. But viewing the hot waters on this side of the valley as competition, Yerxa could find no financial support for his dream.
World War I began and Yerxa left his beloved desert to join the “Doughboy’s” Army. His old well shaft filled with desert sand and vandals attacked his home.
Yerxa, adventurer that he was, lingered in the art centers of Europe after the war was over, first in Paris, then in London
But most likely in the quiet hours of a European night – his mind would drift back here to the clear blue skies, the starry nights and the quiet and solitude of the desert homestead he left behind..
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