Where did your intrepid Desert Way wanderers go today? Landers, California, of course. Why? Well, we were 31 years too late for the big earthquake, so we headed on over to the Morongo Basin Historical Society Museum’s Grand Opening instead. The Morongo Basin Historical Society was founded in 1999 but the museum itself did not…
One of our hobbies we enjoy is browsing museum gift shops and used bookstores for nuggets of information in the form of small books and pamphlets. Some are out-of-print so discovering these treasures is extra fun. As you can imagine, we have collected quite a few desert-related books over the years. If anything good can…
Update 12/08/21: Efforts to build a new community park at Historic Gilman Ranch in Banning will move forward after it received a grant from State Parks for more than $6 million for Stagecoach Stop Park. James Marshall Gilman was born in Meredith, New Hampshire, on June 9, 1842. As a young man, his parents sent…
“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…
Malki Museum, housed in a traditional one-room adobe building on the Morongo Reservation in Banning, California, is a walk through time, displaying in all its grandeur the history and culture of the Cahuilla (spoken as: ‘Caw-we-ah’) Native Americans. The pride shows, and the journey is well worth your time. Morongo is a word of Serrano…
If you sometimes find yourself driving on California State Highway 62, in Morongo Valley, between Palm Springs and Parker, Arizona, then you’ve been by Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, and maybe didn’t even know it was there. Once considered a secret hideaway by Native Americans and later settlers alike, the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve is a…
Deputy Will Smithson and men like Ed Silver lived in Daggett at a time when the west was supposed to have been tamed, when it had become civilized, you might say.
Unfortunately, the news of civilization seemed to have bypassed Daggett, and to locals and drifters alike, the Wild West was doing just fine the way it was, thank you.
Justice was going to be meted out in the tradition of the west if the angry mob caught up with Silver.
A rope and a tree waited for the former Buffalo Soldier, unless the sheriff could catch him first…