The 9/11 Memorial & Museum lay in the footprint of the twin towers of the World Trade Center that was attacked by terrorists deliberately flying aircraft into these buildings on September 11, 2001. Two additional aircraft were hijacked, one crashing into the Pentagon and the second brought down in a field by the brave efforts of the passengers on board. In total, nearly 3000 people lost their lives. The memorial and museum provide a place to contemplate and document what happened on that tragic day in 2001.
USA: California – Joshua Tree National Park
🌸 The Desert Was Putting On a Show
We had come to the high desert of California for several reasons, but the main one — the one that had been circled on the mental itinerary since we’d started planning the trip — was Joshua Tree National Park.
Now, if you ask the average person to paint a picture of a desert, the words that tend to come up are fairly predictable: barren, bare, lifeless, arid, probably hot enough to fry an egg on your forehead. And, to be fair, most of the time they’d be absolutely right. The Mojave Desert, which makes up the northern section of the park, and the lower Colorado Desert to the south, are not places that ordinarily shout come and have a lovely picnic. The park itself sprawled across some 1,235 square miles of southern California, established as a National Monument back in 1936 by President Franklin Roosevelt — largely thanks to the determined campaigning of a woman called Minerva Hoyt, a Mississippi-born socialite who’d developed a passionate obsession with desert plants and spent years lobbying Washington to protect them. She was, by most accounts, a formidable woman who probably could have dried out a desert all by herself just by giving it a firm look. The park was later redesignated a National Park in 1994. It sits in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, roughly two hours east of Los Angeles, which is always an odd thing to contemplate — that you can go from Sunset Boulevard to one of the most remote-feeling landscapes in America in roughly the same time it takes to sit through a directors’ cut.
We were lucky, though. Genuinely, embarrassingly lucky. We had arrived in spring, and the winter rains of 2024 had been particularly generous — the kind of thing the locals talk about in hushed, slightly reverent tones. The Sonoran and Mojave deserts don’t get a great deal of water at the best of times, and when they do, the effect is a little miraculous. The seeds of wildflowers can sit dormant in the sandy soil for years, sometimes decades, just quietly waiting for their moment. Give them a good soaking in the cooler months, and they erupt. The phenomenon even has a name: a superbloom. It doesn’t happen every year — not by a long way — so to roll up and find one in progress felt like turning up to a garden party and discovering they’d laid on a free bar.
Everyone we’d spoken to — the woman at the hire car desk, the bloke at the motel, strangers at a petrol station — had told us to enter through the south entrance at Cottonwood. We took their advice, and it turned out to be one of those rare occasions when following unsolicited guidance from multiple people you’ve never met actually pays off. The Cottonwood entrance sits at a lower elevation, around 3,000 feet, and the southern Pinto Basin area was where the colour had really taken hold.
At the very first pull-in — we hadn’t even properly got going — we stopped the car and got out to have a look. The desert floor was carpeted, and that’s not an exaggeration, with an extraordinary blaze of colour. Yellows from desert dandelions and brittlebush, blues and purples from phacelia and chia, the occasional dash of vivid red from the desert paintbrush. It was, frankly, amazing. One of those moments where you feel slightly fraudulent for being there, as if you’ve accidentally wandered into something you hadn’t properly earned.
The unfortunate truth, of course — and the desert has never been particularly sentimental — was that it wouldn’t last. A few weeks, perhaps, before the blazing summer sun got to work and dried the whole magnificent display back to dust and memory. The temperatures in Joshua Tree in July and August regularly push past 40°C, and these delicate little flowers have no more chance against that than a snowflake in a chip fryer. For a brief window in late February through April, the desert gets to show off. Then it puts it all away again and goes back to looking thoroughly inhospitable.
We stood there for quite a while, longer than was probably necessary, being quietly grateful that we’d managed to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. It doesn’t happen often. Usually, if I’ve gone to any trouble to see something remarkable, it turns out to be the one year in forty that nothing remarkable is happening. Not this time.
We were, for once, rather smug about the whole thing.
🌵 Where Two Deserts Meet — Joshua Tree and the Cholla Cactus Garden
We pulled into Joshua Tree National Park and, as usual, I had done just enough research to be dangerous. What I hadn’t fully appreciated — until the landscape started doing something genuinely odd around us — was that we weren’t just driving through one desert. We were crossing between two of them.
Joshua Tree sits at a remarkable geographical pinch point where the Colorado Desert and the Mojave Desert collide. The Colorado Desert is technically an extension of the great Sonoran Desert — the vast, sun-hammered wilderness that sprawls across Arizona, California, and deep into Mexico — and it occupies the lower, hotter, drier southern reaches of the park. The Mojave, meanwhile, claims the higher ground to the north and west. The two have been quietly arguing over this territory for thousands of years, and the result is a landscape that shifts beneath your feet if you pay close enough attention.
We began our drive in the Colorado Desert section, which felt about as welcoming as the surface of Mars, though admittedly with better parking. The vegetation down here is sparse, scrubby, and low to the ground — the sort of plants that have clearly given up any pretence of looking cheerful and are simply trying to survive. As we climbed in altitude, though, something changed. The scrub gave way to taller, more angular plants. The yuccas appeared. Then the Joshua trees themselves, which look like something a child drew after being told to imagine a tree but having never actually seen one. The Mojave had taken over.
The park is enormous. Around 80 miles separate the south entrance from the north, and the whole thing covers nearly 800,000 acres. It was designated a National Monument back in 1936, largely through the determined efforts of a woman called Minerva Hoyt, a Pasadena socialite who had developed a passionate obsession with desert preservation at a time when most people’s attitude to the Californian desert was roughly “yes, but can we build something on it?” It became a full National Park in 1994. Quite right too.
About halfway through, we came across the Cholla Cactus Garden. This is a stretch of desert floor absolutely carpeted in a species called the Teddybear Cholla — Cylindropuntia bigelovii, if you want to show off at dinner parties — and it stopped us in our tracks. From a distance, the plants have a strange, almost luminous silvery-white glow in the sunlight. They look almost soft. Almost inviting. They are neither of these things.
The Teddybear Cholla has a deeply unpleasant trick up its sleeve. Or rather, on its joints. The stem segments attach to the plant with extraordinary looseness, meaning that the lightest brush against one — a careless elbow, a dog lead swinging in the breeze, a moment of tourist inattention — is enough to detach a segment and embed it firmly in whatever was unfortunate enough to make contact. The spines are barbed, and they swell slightly once inside skin, making them genuinely difficult and rather painful to remove. The recommended method involves two sticks and a certain amount of dignity loss.
The “jumping” description is, technically, a myth — the cactus does not actually launch itself at you. But the spines are so microscopically hooked and the joints so comically loose that it genuinely seems that way. People have walked past these things, felt a tug, and looked down to find a cholla segment dangling from their trousers without any memory of making contact. The plant is, in short, a menace.
The name Teddybear Cholla comes from the way the densely packed golden-silver spines, viewed from a safe distance, give the plant a soft, fuzzy appearance — a bit like the arms and legs of an old stuffed bear. It is a deeply misleading name. We admired them from the boardwalk, kept our arms in, and did not, under any circumstances, attempt a cuddle.
🌵 Into the Mojave — Joshua Trees, Wrong Turns and a Rock Called Skeleton
We pulled up to the edge of the Mojave Desert, which, we have to say, was rather more impressive than we’d expected. The landscape was full of these wonderful smooth rock formations — great rounded lumps of monzonite granite that had been slowly carved and sculpted by wind and water over literally millions of years. The geological process behind it all is called exfoliation, if you want to sound clever at dinner parties, where the outer layers of rock peel away over time like the world’s slowest onion. What you’re left with are these remarkably graceful shapes that look almost deliberate, as if someone very patient had been at them with a chisel.
We’d parked up and spotted a trail leading to something called Skeleton Rock — a particularly dramatic formation that, with a bit of imagination and possibly a second glass of wine, does indeed resemble a skeletal figure. Being the bold adventurers we clearly aren’t, we decided to leave the marked trail and take what seemed like a shortcut through the rocks. This turned out to be one of those decisions that feels reasonable at the time and deeply stupid about ten minutes later, when we found ourselves scrambling on all fours over boulders in thirty-degree heat, trying to look like we’d planned it that way. We hadn’t. We got back on the proper path eventually, slightly scratched and considerably more humble.
It was up here, amid the rocks and the dust and the mild embarrassment, that we clapped eyes on our first Joshua Tree — the very plant after which Joshua Tree National Park takes its name. And what a peculiar and magnificent thing it is. The park itself was established in 1936, initially as a national monument under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, before being upgraded to full National Park status in 1994. It sits at the junction of two deserts — the higher, cooler Mojave and the lower, hotter Colorado — and the Joshua Tree is very much the Mojave’s signature resident.
Standing anything up to around nine metres tall (that’s roughly thirty feet for those of us still working in old money), the Joshua Tree looks like something a child might draw if asked to invent a plant — all spiky tufts and angular arms going off in unexpected directions. Despite appearances, it’s actually a member of the lily family, which we found genuinely baffling. It was named, so the story goes, by Mormon settlers crossing the desert in the 1850s, who felt that the outstretched branches resembled the biblical figure of Joshua pointing them towards the promised land. We can see what they were getting at, even if we personally thought it looked more like a very confused cactus.
The Joshua Tree is a tough old thing. It thrives in the brutal conditions of the Mojave — scorching summers, bitterly cold winters, minimal rainfall — and it doesn’t rush about doing it. Growth is painfully slow, sometimes just a few centimetres a year, and a fully grown specimen can be several hundred years old. In return for this stoic existence, it provides shelter and sustenance for an extraordinary range of creatures, including the Scott’s oriole, various woodpeckers, and the yucca night lizard, which lives exclusively beneath the bark of fallen trees. The relationship between the Joshua Tree and the yucca moth is particularly remarkable — the two species are entirely dependent on one another for reproduction, which is either charming or alarming depending on your outlook.
The indigenous peoples of the region — notably the Cahuilla and Serrano — had been making excellent use of the Joshua Tree long before any of us arrived with cameras and sandwiches. They used the tough, fibrous leaves to weave baskets and to make sandals, which, given the terrain, seems entirely sensible. The flower buds were eaten, and the seeds — either raw or roasted — were a useful dietary supplement. Practical, resourceful people who clearly didn’t wander off marked trails.
At this time of year the Joshua Trees were in full bloom, and we weren’t quite prepared for how striking that looked. Each tree was topped with dense clusters of creamy white flowers — tightly packed upright spikes that put us very much in mind of the flowers on a horse chestnut tree back home. Given that we were standing in an American desert surrounded by rocks and rattlesnake warnings, it was a surprisingly English sort of thought.
Planning your visit to Joshua Tree
Here is the page content, written in UK English:
🌵 Joshua Tree National Park: Your Complete Visitor’s Guide
📍 Overview
Joshua Tree National Park sits in south-eastern California, where two of North America’s great deserts converge. The higher-elevation Mojave Desert occupies the western and northern portions of the park, harbouring the distinctive, sculptural Joshua trees for which the park is named. To the south and east, the lower Colorado Desert takes over, creating a hotter, starker landscape of creosote and cholla cacti. Together, these two ecosystems produce an extraordinary diversity of terrain, flora, and fauna across more than 790,000 acres of protected wilderness.
The park draws over three million visitors each year, attracted by its otherworldly rock formations, wide desert vistas, and near-constant sunshine. Whether you are a keen hiker, a rock climber, an amateur astronomer, or simply someone in search of open skies and solitude, Joshua Tree offers a remarkable and memorable experience.
🗺️ Location
Joshua Tree National Park is located in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, in the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley region of southern California. The park has three main entrance points:
The West Entrance is situated near the town of Joshua Tree, off Park Boulevard, and is the most frequently used gateway. The North Entrance is located near Twentynine Palms, where the main visitor centre is found. The South Entrance, accessible from Interstate 10 via Box Canyon Road, leads to the Cottonwood Visitor Centre and is the least busy of the three.
The park’s administrative headquarters is at:
74485 National Park Drive, Twentynine Palms, CA 92277-3597, United States
The nearest major city is Palm Springs, approximately 40 minutes from the south entrance, which makes an excellent base for visitors who prefer hotel accommodation. Los Angeles is around 128 miles away, a drive of roughly two and a half to three and a half hours depending on traffic. The nearest airport is Palm Springs International Airport (PSP), about one hour from the park entrance, from which a hire car is essential.
🌐 Website
📞 Contact
Visitor Information & General Enquiries: +1 760-367-5500
Campgrounds & Backpacking Permits: +1 760-367-5554
Black Rock Canyon Campground: +1 760-367-3001
Indian Cove Campground: +1 760-368-4367
Emergency: 911
✉️ Email: Contact forms for visitor enquiries, trip planning, education programmes, and general questions are available via the park’s official website at www.nps.gov/jotr/contacts.htm. The park does not publish a single general-purpose email address; all correspondence is handled through the appropriate online contact form on the NPS website.
🎟️ Entry Fees
All visitors aged 16 and over must hold a valid entrance pass. Fees are current as of 2025 and all standard passes are valid for seven consecutive days from the date of purchase.
Private Vehicle: $30 — covers the vehicle and all passengers travelling in it.
Motorcycle: $25 — valid for up to two motorcycles with up to four passengers in total.
Individual (on foot or by bicycle): $15 per person — required for anyone aged 16 or over entering without a motor vehicle. Children under 16 enter free of charge.
Annual Park Pass (Joshua Tree only): $55 — valid for 12 months from the date of purchase.
America the Beautiful Pass (all US National Parks & Federal Lands): $80 for a standard annual pass for US residents. Non-resident annual passes are also available. This pass is the best value option for visitors intending to visit more than one national park during their trip.
Free or discounted passes are available to US military veterans and Gold Star families, visitors with a permanent disability, families with a child enrolled in 4th grade, and US seniors aged 62 and over (who may purchase a discounted annual or lifetime pass).
Passes can be purchased in person at the Joshua Tree Visitor Centre, the Oasis Visitor Centre in Twentynine Palms, the Cottonwood Visitor Centre, and at the North and West entrance stations (entrance stations accept credit and debit cards only; visitor centres accept cash as well). Passes can also be purchased in advance online via Recreation.gov.
🕐 Opening Times
The park itself is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There are no closures for public holidays and visitors may enter and exit at any time of day or night.
Visitor centres maintain regular staffed hours, as follows:
Oasis Visitor Centre (Twentynine Palms — North Entrance): Open daily, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Joshua Tree Visitor Centre (Joshua Tree Village — West Entrance): Open daily, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm
Cottonwood Visitor Centre (South Entrance): Open daily, 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
Black Rock Nature Centre (Black Rock Campground): Open October through May, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm daily except Fridays, when hours are noon to 8:00 pm
It is worth noting that during the summer months, some campground loops close due to extreme heat, and certain trails — including the 49 Palms Oasis Trail — may be closed for safety reasons. A fire ban (no campfires or charcoal grilling) is in effect from 15 June to 1 October each year.
🥾 Things to Do
Hiking is the primary activity for most visitors. The park offers trails to suit all abilities, from short, flat nature walks to strenuous mountain ascents. Popular routes include the Skull Rock Nature Trail (1.7 miles), the Arch Rock Nature Trail (a gentle loop near White Tank Campground), the Ryan Mountain Trail (3.1 miles with panoramic views from the second-highest peak in the park), the Barker Dam Trail (1.3 miles, passing ancient Native American petroglyphs and a small reservoir), and the Fortynine Palms Oasis Trail (3 miles) leading to a beautiful, secluded palm grove. For the more adventurous, the Panorama Loop Trail (6.4 miles) in the north-west offers sweeping views of the Coachella Valley.
Rock formations are among the park’s most iconic features. Millennia of erosion have produced an extraordinary landscape of granite boulders, arches, and sculpted outcrops. Skull Rock, Arch Rock, and Split Rock are among the most photographed. The area around Hidden Valley and Jumbo Rocks is particularly dramatic.
Rock climbing has been popular at Joshua Tree since the 1970s and the park is now regarded as one of the world’s premier climbing destinations. With over 8,000 climbing routes across all grades, it attracts everyone from complete beginners to elite climbers.
Keys View is the highest accessible point in the park and the finest viewpoint. On clear days, visitors can see the Coachella Valley, Palm Springs, the San Andreas Fault line, Mount San Jacinto, and on exceptionally clear days, peaks extending as far as Mexico. Sunset from Keys View is particularly celebrated.
Stargazing is exceptional here. The park earned its International Dark Sky Park designation in 2017 and is regarded as one of the finest stargazing locations in the continental United States. Designated viewing areas include Quail Springs, Hidden Valley, Cap Rock, and Ryan Mountain car parks. Guided stargazing tours with professional astronomers and telescope access are available for those who wish to deepen the experience.
The Cholla Cactus Garden is a must-see stop along the main park road — a dense grove of otherworldly teddy bear cholla cacti that bloom between January and August.
Lost Horse Mine offers a fascinating glimpse into the park’s gold rush history. The preserved mine site can be reached via a 4-mile or 6.5-mile loop trail and features historical equipment and artefacts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Wildlife watching rewards patience and quiet observation. Resident species include the desert tortoise (endangered), bighorn sheep, coyotes, desert cottontail rabbits, jackrabbits, ground squirrels, lizards, red-tailed hawks, golden eagles, and hummingbirds. Rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas are also present; visitors should take appropriate care on the trails.
⛺ Camping
The park has nine developed campgrounds. The most popular — including Jumbo Rocks, Hidden Valley, and White Tank — book up quickly during the busy season from November to May and advance reservations are strongly recommended via Recreation.gov. A small number of campgrounds operate on a first-come, first-served basis. Backcountry camping is also permitted throughout much of the park, provided campers hike at least one mile in from any road and set up at least 500 feet from any trail.
Camping fees vary by campground and are separate from the entrance fee. There are no hotels, restaurants, petrol stations, or shops inside the park. Visitors must bring all food, water, and supplies with them. The gateway towns of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms on the northern side of the park, and Palm Springs to the south, offer the full range of accommodation, dining, and shopping options.
⚠️ Essential Visitor Information
There is no drinking water available in the interior of the park and no mobile phone coverage across most of the park’s area. Visitors are strongly advised to carry a minimum of one gallon (approximately four litres) of water per person per day. Summer temperatures routinely exceed 38°C (100°F) and the ground surface can reach far higher; strenuous activity during the hottest part of the day should be avoided from June to September. Pets are not permitted on any park trails, though they may be brought into the park and kept within 30 metres of roads, car parks, and picnic areas. Drones are prohibited throughout the park.
Best time to visit Joshua Tree
🌸 Spring (March – May)
Best overall season · 10°C – 27°C
Spring is widely regarded as the finest time to visit Joshua Tree. Temperatures are agreeably mild — warm enough for comfortable hiking but rarely oppressive — and the desert rewards visitors with an extraordinary wildflower bloom, typically peaking between late March and mid-April. Carpets of golden poppies, purple phacelia, and white primrose transform the normally sparse terrain into a vivid tapestry. The Joshua trees themselves burst into creamy white flowers, making the landscape particularly photogenic. Birdwatching is excellent during the spring migration, and the long daylight hours offer ample time to explore both the Mojave and Colorado Desert ecosystems within the park.
What to pack: Light layers including a fleece for cool mornings and evenings, sun-protective clothing, a wide-brimmed hat, SPF 50+ sunscreen, sturdy hiking boots, plenty of water (at least 1 litre per hour of hiking), sunglasses, a camera, insect repellent, and a light waterproof jacket for occasional April showers.
☀️ Summer (June – August)
Challenging — for hardy visitors · 38°C – 45°C+
Summer is the most demanding season in Joshua Tree, and arguably the most hazardous for the unprepared. Daytime temperatures routinely exceed 38°C and can surge well past 45°C in open terrain — conditions that make midday hiking genuinely dangerous. The National Park Service strongly advises against strenuous outdoor activity between 10am and 4pm during summer months. That said, the park takes on a raw, otherworldly character during this period, and for those acclimatised to extreme heat, the solitude is unmatched. Dawn and dusk hikes offer striking light and cooler conditions. Summer nights are spectacular for stargazing, as the park sits within a designated International Dark Sky Park.
What to pack: Lightweight, loose, long-sleeved sun-protective clothing, a wide-brimmed hat, SPF 50+ sunscreen and lip balm, electrolyte tablets, a minimum of 4 litres of water per day, a cooling towel, insulated water bottles, sandals or breathable trainers for evenings, and a red-light torch for night sky viewing.
🍂 Autumn (September – November)
Excellent season · 15°C – 32°C
Autumn brings a welcome return of pleasant temperatures and ranks alongside spring as one of the park’s prime visiting windows. September can still feel uncomfortably warm, particularly earlier in the month, but by October conditions are near-ideal — sunny, dry, and calm. October and November see smaller crowds than spring, making it easier to secure camping pitches and enjoy popular trails such as Skull Rock and Hidden Valley in relative peace. The autumn light is warm and golden, lending a magnificent quality to the park’s famous rock formations at sunrise and sunset. Migrating raptors add interest for birdwatchers throughout the season.
What to pack: Layering essentials including a mid-layer fleece and a windproof jacket (evenings cool sharply), sun protection for warm September days, hiking boots with ankle support for rocky terrain, a star map or astronomy app, a head torch, a camping mat if bivouacking, and warm socks — October nights can dip close to freezing.
❄️ Winter (December – February)
Quiet and atmospheric · 2°C – 18°C
Winter is Joshua Tree’s quietest and most atmospheric season. Daytime temperatures at lower elevations are crisp and pleasant, making for invigorating hikes without the risk of heat-related illness. At higher elevations — particularly around Keys View, which sits at over 1,700 metres — snow is possible and occasionally transforms the desert into a strikingly beautiful winter landscape. The air is exceptionally clear in winter, affording panoramic views across the Coachella Valley all the way to the Salton Sea and the San Jacinto Mountains. Nights are cold and often frosty, but the darkness is profound and the stargazing rivals anywhere in North America. Visitor numbers are at their lowest, and wildlife sightings — including desert bighorn sheep and coyotes — are particularly rewarding.
What to pack: A warm, insulated jacket and thermal base layers, a woolly hat and gloves, waterproof walking boots (for possible snow at altitude), sunscreen (winter sun reflects powerfully), sunglasses, hand warmers, a sleeping bag rated to at least -5°C for camping, a thermos flask, and high-energy snacks such as nuts and dried fruit.
Overall verdict
Spring, particularly late March through April, represents the very best time to visit Joshua Tree National Park. The combination of mild temperatures, spectacular wildflower blooms, long days, and moderate visitor numbers creates near-ideal conditions for hiking, photography, camping, and stargazing alike. Autumn — especially October — is a close second, offering similarly agreeable weather with an even quieter atmosphere. Visitors from the UK will find both seasons comfortably familiar in terms of daylight duration, while the desert setting provides a dramatic and unforgettable contrast to the British countryside. If flexibility allows, aim for the shoulder weeks of late March or late October, when the park is neither at its most crowded nor its most extreme, and the quality of light is simply extraordinary.
Where to stay in near Joshua Tree National Park
1. LES CACTUS
Located in Palm Springs, a 16-minute walk from Palm Springs Convention Center, Les Cactus has accommodations with free WiFi and free private parking. The property is around 3.2 miles from Palm Springs Square Shopping Center, 3.9 miles from Palm Springs Visitor Center and 8 miles from Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Guests can use the hot tub, or enjoy pool views.
At the hotel, rooms include a closet, a flat-screen TV, a private bathroom, bed linen and towels. The rooms will provide guests with a fridge.
Les Cactus offers a continental or buffet breakfast.
2. Hampton Inn & Suites Indio
The Hampton Inn & Suites Indio is a reliable mid-range option in the Coachella Valley, well suited to both leisure and business travellers. Located in Indio, California, it offers a range of room types including suites with separate living areas, making it a practical choice for families or longer stays. Guests can expect the standard Hampton Inn package: complimentary hot breakfast, a outdoor pool, a fitness centre, and free Wi-Fi throughout the property. The hotel is conveniently positioned near the Empire Polo Club, home to the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals, as well as local shopping and dining. Rooms are clean and comfortable without being particularly distinctive — functional rather than characterful. The included breakfast is a genuine bonus, and the staff are generally noted for being helpful and accommodating. For travellers seeking a dependable, no-surprises base in the desert, it does the job well.
3. CASA CODY
Casa Cody holds the distinction of being the oldest operating hotel in Palm Springs, founded in the 1920s by Harriet Cody — a relative of Buffalo Bill. The property has genuine history behind it: Charlie Chaplin, opera singer Lawrence Tibbett, and writer Anaïs Nin were all regulars. After a thorough restoration in 2021 by the Casetta Group, it reopened as a boutique retreat that sits a couple of blocks from Palm Canyon Drive, with the San Jacinto Mountains as a backdrop. Rooms and cottages vary in size, with some offering full kitchens and fireplaces — useful for longer stays. There are two pools, a small spa, and Harriet’s, which serves breakfast and all-day light bites. The grounds are well kept, with mature planting and a relaxed, unhurried atmosphere. It’s pet-friendly, has free parking, and is within easy walking distance of the town centre. A solid, characterful choice for Palm Springs.
Where to stay
More to Explore
