Indian Wells moving forward on Carl Bray tribute

A sign from the now-demolished Carl Bray gallery and home along Highway 111. (Photo: Xochitl Peña/ The Desert Sun)

Xochitl Peña
The Desert Sun

A huge wooden painter's palette that stood along Highway 111 in Indian Wells and served as a tribute to Carl Bray's artistic contributions will be resurrected.

City officials plan to use either a replica of the memorable landmark or restore the original one that's now in storage to create an historical monument.

"It is an iconic sign," said Jan Holmlund, an adviser to the Indian Wells Preservation Foundation. "It is something that means a lot to a lot of people,"

The famous palette sign, which also let people traveling east on Highway 111 know they are close to the edge of the city limits, came down in 2010 after the city purchased the property and demolished Bray's gallery and home.

Since then, leaders have discussed — but never formalized — ways to honor the desert landscape artist.

The Indian Wells City Council last week finally set that vision in motion by approving a concept for the monument, one of three scenarios that HSA Design Group presented.

City leaders indicated they wanted two curved stone walls with plaques mounted on the walls, showcasing the history of the city and Bray. The wooden palette sign also will be showcased prominently near its original location.

"It is the last remnant of the old village of Indian Wells. This was the historic beginning," said Adele Ruxton, president of the Indian Wells Preservation Foundation.

The plans also includes natural stone benches, green space and the addition of the smoke trees, which Bray favored in his art.

The site is accessible from a public sidewalk. Public parking nearby will not be provided.

Councilwoman Mary Roche said she can envision walking maps with directions to the monument being handed out to guests at the city's local resorts.

"I think this concept would be a wonderful addition to our city," she said.

While Bray is best known for his art, Roche said he also is considered a founder of the city and its commercial area.

According to Ruxton, Bray's neighbors back in the day included "a few cabins, a dance hall, two small grocery stores, two gas stations, a café and … a rattlesnake pen."

Bray bought that property along Highway 111 in the early 1950s for $1,000, which used to be the location of a Cahuilla village and was said to house an Indian well.

Bray sold the land around 2000, and moved to Banning. The 94-year-old died in 2011. The city in 2009 purchased the property in a foreclosure.

The city decided to demolish the buildings on the property because they were run down and deemed a safety hazard.

But because of the land's historical significance and ties to the Cahuilla Indians, an environmental impact report required an "interpretive exhibit" related to Bray as "artist, railroad man, builder and last resident of Old Indian Wells Village."

Development of the monument is expected to cost more than $30,000. The council has asked HSA though to look at revisions that could reduce the cost.

Southern Pacific Railroad made path through the "heart of the desert"

Floodwaters from the Colorado River filled the Salton Sink in 1906 -1907. The Southern Pacific Railroad tracks had to be moved. (Photo courtesy of Salton Sea History Museum)

Denise Goolsby
The Desert Sun

The transcontinental railroad opened the doors to America, especially those lightly traveled areas where Herculean efforts were required to cross hundreds of miles of remote wilderness, steep mountains, and endless desert.

Discovery of gold in 1848 focused world attention on California and the Pacific Coast region. At the time, early settlers had few options in cross country travel: An arduous overland journey across the plains by oxen or mules, or long ocean voyages via Panama or around Cape Horn.

A growing sentiment in the west and east favored a railroad that would bind the nation closer together.

The roots of Southern Pacific Railroad's path through the Coachella Valley can be traced to the country's pre-Civil War days and the creation of the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California, incorporated June 28, 1861.

The brainchild of Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker, the corporation was formed to build the western portion of the Pacific Railroad — a transcontinental link from Sacramento, east over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Construction began in Sacramento in 1863 followed by authorization of Congress in 1863. The line traversed 690 miles over the mountains and across Nevada to meet the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah, where the last spike was driven on May 10, 1869.

In 1865, the Southern Pacific Railroad was organized to build lines from San Francisco to San Diego and eastward to rails being proposed to reach westward from New Orleans.

The surveyors for the Southern Pacific route reached the site of Indio, known as Indian Wells at the time, on March 25, 1872. They reported that this point was halfway between Los Angeles and Yuma, Ariz. A perfect spot for a train depot.

Southern Pacific acquired a 22-mile railroad from Los Angeles to Wilmington, opened in October, 1869 and construction began during 1873 on lines north and east out of the city.

Trains were operated to Colton on July 16, 1895 and to Indio on May 29, 1876.

After the railroad's arrival in 1876, Indio really started to grow. The first permanent building was the craftsman style Southern Pacific Depot station and hotel. Southern Pacific tried to make life as comfortable as it could for their workers in order to keep them from leaving such a difficult area to live in at the time. It was the center of all social life in the desert with a fancy dining room. Dances were hosted on Friday nights.

While Indio started as a railroad town, it developed into an agricultural area shortly thereafter. Onions, cotton, grapes, citrus and dates thrived in the arid climate due to the ingenuity of farmers finding various means of attaining water — first through artesian wells.

The arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad would leave an indelible mark on the Palm Springs-based Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and shaped the future of the tribe. In the 1860s, the Federal government granted the railroad ten miles of odd-numbered sections of land on each side of the railroad right-of-way.

In 1876, when President Ulysses S. Grant established the present Agua Caliente Indian Reservation by executive order, only the even-numbered sections were still available. This created the reservation's "checkerboard" pattern.

In 1875, the Cahuilla Indians began working on the construction of the railroad. The tracks ran about six miles north of the Palm Springs Way Station, which served as a stagecoach stop from 1865 until the rail line was completed in 1887.

The Southern Pacific built a Spanish-styled railroad station in the 1930s, located in North Palm Springs on Tipton Road off Highway 111.

By this time, Palm Springs had already become a popular tourist destination and was known as a world famous winter playground for Hollywood stars. The Southern Pacific, traveling on what became known as the Sunset Route, now delivered travelers right at the doorstep of this thriving desert community.

A 1914 brochure touting the Southern Pacific Sunset Route as the "Best Route to the California 1915 Expositions" — the Panama-Pacific Exposition was being held in San Francisco and the Panama-California Exposition was taking place in San Diego — provided colorful descriptions of the stops along the route, which originated in New Orleans.

This is how the railroad's literature depicted the desert 100 years ago:

"Yuma, the Colorado River and California is reached 1,754 miles west from New Orleans … the route is through a region that is peculiar and interesting. At Imperial Junction, a branch line of the Southern Pacific runs south to the celebrated Imperial Valley, which has sprung into a wonderful existence in a night, almost, because of its splendid fertility, its varied, almost tropical products, freedom from frosts, great volume of water for irrigation, taken from the Colorado, and its rapid development and adaptability for all forms of agriculture, yet in the heart of the desert."

That year, 1914, the valley shipped more than 4,000 cars of cantaloupes alone, to all sections of the United States. From a waste only a few years ago, the Imperial Valley now has a population of 25,000 with fine towns, street cars, clubs, newspapers, excellent hotels and a high class civilization.

The journey is then through the Salton Valley and along the northern shores of the Salton Sea made by an overflow of the Colorado Rivers some years ago. Here the train runs for miles below the sea level, at Salton reaching the bottom of a great depression at a depth of 253 feet. This condition is peculiar and unequaled and is not even approximated by any other railroad in the world. The route through the California desert passes through Thermal, Coachella and Indio, all below sea level, and climbs the divide, reaching the apex at Beaumont, California."

Next week: Southern Pacific Railroad History in the Coachella Valley, Part II.

Sources: City of Palm Springs, Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, Historian Pat Laflin, Coachella Valley Water District, Central Pacific Railroad website, Michael L. Grace (Palm Springs Rail Heritage blog)

Cahuilla dug wells near La Quinta's Point Happy

Point Happy Date Gardens at the intersection of Highway 111 and Washington Street in the 1960s. This is now the site of Vons shopping center. (Photo: Photo courtesy of La Quinta Historical Society)

Denise Goolsby
The Desert Sun

The area just east of the Santa Rosa Mountains, where its foothills jut out into the desert near the intersection of Highway 111 and Washington Street in La Quinta, used to be home to the Cahuilla Indians. Later, it was a watering hole along a stagecoach route, and for many years, a working ranch.

The sprawling land where the ranch once stood is now occupied by Plaza La Quinta, a bustling shopping center anchored by a Vons grocery store and the Estates at Point Happy, an enclave of luxury homes.

The Cahuilla Indians found the area — which became known as Point Happy at the turn of the 20th century — a hospitable spot, as the Santa Rosas provided protection from fierce desert sandstorms and flash flooding.

Along the wash, the Cahuillas dug gently sloping pathways down to the springs below. The hand-dug "Indian Well" was located less than 300 yards from Point Happy. It was destroyed in the 100-year flood in 1916.

When gold was discovered in La Paz and Ehrenburg, Ariz. in 1862, Major William Bradshaw established the first trail through the Coachella Valley and across the Colorado Desert to California's neighboring state. Point Happy soon became a landmark for stagecoaches traveling the Bradshaw Trail. During this period, the stop began its tradition as a hospitable "watering hole" for desert travelers.

The area, tucked under the shadow of the Santa Rosas, was named after Norman "Happy" Lundbeck, an early desert settler who began homesteading the area in the early 1900s. Lundbeck established a stable and small store and sold wares to those traveling across the hot, dusty desert. A one-room elementary school was built on the property in 1916.

The Point Happy property and 135 adjoining acres were bought in 1922 by philanthropist Chauncey D. Clarke, who named it Point Happy Date Gardens. Clarke, who thought climactic conditions were similar to those in the Middle East, raised Arabian horses on the ranch for four years until his death in 1926.

J. Win Wilson, in a Los Angeles Times article dated March 8, 1925, said Clarke, "is a very enthusiastic booster for the dates and horses of the old world desert lands. The desert climate and condition, he believes, offer the finest training ground for making the horses both sure-footed and strong in shoulders and joints. In other words, he believes that conditions in the Coachella Valley are so similar to those in Arabia, where the Arab horses have been developed to perfection, as to afford ideal environment for the raising of this notable breed of equine."

The Times article described the agreeable conditions at the ranch, where at the time, Clarke had 11 horses — five stallions and six mares.

"His stud is provided with all modern conveniences: solid box walls, corrals, tank house and modern living quarters for his trainer. A quarter-mile track is also a feature, for regular exercising of his horses figures prominently in Mr. Clarke's plans."

Louise Rodarte Neeley, historian and a member of one of the city's pioneering families, recalls happy days at the ranch, where her father, Teofilo Rodarte was a foreman and her mother, Juanita, was the Clarke's housekeeper.

She said the ranch was filled with date palms and avocado, orange, fig, pecan, apricot, mulberry and grapefruit trees, row crops and sugar cane.

"We swam. We hiked. We had the mountain to the back of us," she said. "Growing up was happy. It was wonderful. Mother had chickens and a cow. We had the run of the place."

Her father was hired in 1923 and continued until his death in 1943. Her brother, Jess Rodarte was hired to tend the date trees.

Neeley said Mrs. Clarke's full-time gardener, Mr. Akahoshi, planted a large vegetable garden for home use and maintained an extensive rose garden and many varieties of annual flowers for the pleasure of their guests.

Knowing he was ill, Clarke sold his horses to the Kellogg Ranch in Pomona. Clarke died on Aug. 22, 1926. It is said that those horses became the breeding stock of the purebred Arabians in California.

His wife, Marie Clarke, a founder of the Hollywood Bowl, was instrumental in setting up and financially underwriting the Indio Women's Club. She continued to live on the ranch after her husband's death. She died on Oct. 30, 1948, leaving the property to Claremont College, which in turn, sold off parts of the property.

Point Happy Date Gardens was sold to William DuPont Jr., CEO of DuPont Chemical Corporation in the 1950s. He built a home in the Santa Rosa Mountains overlooking the ranch. To the southwest of the palm grove, he built a Spanish home with a pool and tennis court for friend Alice Marble, the top-ranked American woman tennis player in 1939.

Marble, a longtime Palm Desert resident, won 18 Grand Slam championships. She died at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs in 1990.

The house was finished on Dec. 16, 1965. DuPont Jr. died three days later. Portions of the ranch were sold off to subdividers.

The last owners of the ranch were Dr. Earl R. Kiernan and his wife Florence. By 2004, the final page was turned in the ranch's storied history with the construction of the Estates at Point Happy.

Sources: La Quinta Historical Society, La Quinta Museum, City of La Quinta Historic Context Statement, 1996.