Two hours from the Hollywood studios, Palm Springs became a movie-colony retreat in the 1920s and '30s, and after the war it turned into something the world had never quite seen: the capital of mid-century modern design. Through the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, architects filled the desert with glass-walled houses, folded-plate roofs, and breeze-block screens — the style now called Desert Modernism, and still the densest concentration of preserved mid-century modern architecture in the country. In 1963 the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway opened, climbing the sheer cliffs of Chino Canyon to Mount San Jacinto State Park; rebuilt with rotating cars in 2000, it remains the world's largest rotating tramcar. Each February, Modernism Week — founded in 2006 — brings a global design crowd back to the butterfly roofs.
The desert's mid-century modern capital — a Coachella Valley oasis where Hollywood built a town of butterfly roofs and the world's largest rotating tram climbs two miles into the mountains. Palm Springs sits in a bowl of sun at the foot of Mount San Jacinto, on the floor of the Coachella Valley. The Agua Caliente Cahuilla built their lives around its hot mineral springs and palm-canyon oases for thousands of years; by the 1950s it had become a sun-drenched modernist playground of clean lines and kidney-shaped pools. Three hundred and fifty days of sun, a mountain that leaps straight off the desert floor, and a whole town of desert-modern design — this page tells the story.
Why People Visit Palm Springs California
- Ride the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway up Chino Canyon to the cooler pine forests of Mount San Jacinto State Park.
- Hike the Indian Canyons, the Cahuilla fan-palm oases with stream-fed trails.
- Tour the mid-century modern neighborhoods — and time a visit for Modernism Week in February.
- Stroll Palm Canyon Drive downtown for galleries, design shops, and classic facades.
- Wander Moorten Botanical Garden and the Palm Springs Art Museum.
- Detour west to the roadside Cabazon Dinosaurs (in Cabazon, about 20 minutes away) or out to Joshua Tree National Park.
