The desert has often played an important role in religions, spiritual enlightenment and artists seeking the esoteric. A half-mile past the turnoff to Pioneertown Road in Yucca Valley, 40 larger-than-life biblical statues from the mid-century rise from the rocky sandscape to offer a peaceful place for contemplation and renewal. It all started when Reverend Eddie
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James Marshall Gilman was born in Meredith, New Hampshire, on June 9, 1842. As a young man, his parents sent him to join his brother, a wholesale liquor salesman in San Francisco. After a short stint as a mercantile businessman in Oregon, James ventured to Banning, California. He founded the 160 acre Gilman Ranch and
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Dateline: March 10, 2012… The Associated Press–“Dr. Robert Schuller and his wife Arvella announced “with great sadness” Saturday that they resigned from the board of directors of the Crystal Cathedral, the televangelist ministry he founded four decades ago in Garden Grove, California, and made famous through his “Hour of Power” television program. Their resignation was
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Where do you go in Joshua Tree when you’re not in the mood for the National Park experience? We opted for Noah Purifoy’s old place. Down a dirt road, on the left. We saw it before we were there. Are those commodes towering in the air? we wondered. Yes indeed. Porcelain monuments to the private
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Update: The Cabot Pueblo Museum is temporarily closed to the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Please check the museum’s website (below) for current information about closures before you go. It is a given that when researching information about a particular topic, one discovery often leads to another. Such is the case when we recently
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“The Gubler family has loved and grown orchids for three generations. Swiss citizen, Hans Gubler, who grew up in a family-owned orchid-growing business, came to America on a Missouri Botanical Gardens scholarship in 1918. He returned to Sweden but emigrated to Temple City, California, in the mid-1950s. Hans bought the Landers nursery in 1975.” ~06
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Drive north out of Palm Springs on Highway 62, past Desert Hot Springs, and the appreciative eye is drawn towards the majesty of Mount San Gorgonio to the west. 11,503 feet above sea level, and about 9,000 feet above this place right here, the Mission Creek Preserve. In a land that is a little bit
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Sometimes you pick up tips in the darnedest of places. A few weeks ago we were at our veterinarian’s office to get one of our dogs his routine vaccines, and began discussing interesting local places to explore with the vet, a long-time resident of the area. The doc asked us if we’d heard of Coyote
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There once was a time at least 2,000 years ago, when the only voices heard in the desert below Mount San Jacinto were those of the Cahuilla people. At a time when the Roman Empire ruled over most of Europe and the Middle East, the Cahuillas lived here in relative peace. The Romans are gone,
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The fearless explorers walk along the trail. Quiet. Ever on the lookout for desert flora and fauna. Suddenly, as they round the bend, they come face-to-face with a world of beauty in the guise of the Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium, just down the street from a good cup of espresso on Palm Canyon Drive.
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