On November 1, 1887, Dr. Welwood Murray, a Scottish-born fruit rancher from Banning, California, opened the Palm Springs Hotel. Dr. Murray’s hotel did a lively business during the late fall and winter months, especially as the hotel was a short walk to the hot springs (at Tahquitz and Indian Canyon), where bathers paid the owners—the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla—25 cents for a dip.
The hotel had many famous visitors, though none so unexpected as fellow Scotsman and world-famous naturalist, John Muir, who showed up one early summer in 1905 with his two daughters. The hotel was closed for the summer, but Murray and his wife were present, so they quickly cleaned rooms and put a meal on the communal table for the Muir family. By all accounts, the temperature ranged between 110 and 120 degrees. It would be nearly a half century before air conditioning made summer living in the Valley bearable.
Muir wrote to a friend who had recommended Palm Springs as a cure for one of his daughter’s health: “The days hot enough and dry enough to evaporate every disease and all one’s flesh…the first night we lay down under an olive tree in the sandy orchard, and the heat of the sand along our spines brought vividedly (sic) to mind Milton’s unlucky angels lying on the burning marl.”
A couple days later, the Muirs decamped to Andreas Canyon for the slightly cooler remnant of their two-week visit.
