Travel

A Guide to Palm Springs and Coachella Valley Spas and Retreats


Palm Springs conjures many images in the popular imagination: California oasis, Old Hollywood hide-out, golf and tennis hot spot, midcentury modern pilgrimage site. But long before Richard Neutra’s airy, glassy Kaufmann House or John Lautner’s concrete-domed Elrod House, there was Welwood Murray’s rickety wooden bathhouse.

That two-room shack, built over a hot spring in the late 1880s, was one of the first tourist attractions in the Coachella Valley — newly accessible by railroad to people with tuberculosis and other ailments who were seeking relief in the desert air and mineral water.

Mr. Murray, a Scottish rancher and entrepreneur, had secured a lease for his bathhouse from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. But as the “Agua Caliente” in their name would suggest, that hot water was too important to their identity to leave in anyone else’s hands for long, and in the early 1900s, control reverted to the tribe.

“The hot mineral spring is essentially our heart and soul,” said Reid Milanovich, who has served as the tribal chairman since April 2022. “We’ve been using these waters for generations for purposes of both spiritual healing and physical healing.”

The tradition of sharing the spring with visitors has also spanned generations: The tribe ran a succession of bathhouses, then opened the Spa Resort Hotel on the site in 1963. When this multimillion-dollar, 131-room Modernist complex debuted, it became the place to take the local waters. Indeed, it was the only place, because it retained exclusive access to the Agua Caliente spring, the sole option in town. So when everything in the complex except the casino closed in 2014, anyone hoping for a warm mineral soak in Palm Springs was stuck on dry land.

The tribe had determined that the 1950s-era water collection system needed enough repair to require the spa’s demolition — a catalyst for rethinking the entire site. “We’re talking about one of the most important sections of the reservation,” Mr. Milanovich said. “We had to make sure it would be protected for future generations.” The best way to do so, tribal members and leaders concluded, was to create experiences that were educational and celebratory of Cahuilla heritage.

After nearly a decade of work on the site, and one of the most significant Indigenous archaeological recoveries in the country — thousands of artifacts unearthed; thousands of years added to the local historical record — the new Spa at Séc-he opened on April 4. And by late 2023, a neighboring museum will delve into the excavation as well as the tribe’s history, culture, language and more.

Though right in the heart of Palm Springs, Séc-he (pronounced SEH-hee, or SEH-khee) is only one of numerous spring-fed spas in the region. About 10 miles away, the town of Desert Hot Springs — with its own famed aquifers and soaking sites — is bubbling back to life after declaring bankruptcy in 2001 and narrowly avoiding a repeat in 2013. Since becoming the first place in Southern California to legalize large-scale medical-marijuana cultivation in 2014, however, the community is rebounding, new retreats are opening and old favorites are expanding.

Here’s a guide to total immersion in Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs.


The most venerable of the Desert Hot Springs retreats, Two Bunch Palms has served as an Al Capone hide-out (or so the story goes) and a Hollywood backdrop (in the 1992 Robert Altman film “The Player”). At 70 acres, the oasis is sprawling — its titular palms dominating a landscape so lush that aquatic turtles and birds seem as common as spa-goers. (Rest assured: Humans and animals take the waters in separate spaces.)

Over the course of the pandemic, the property added a vast new spring-fed soaking area, where the latest tubs — all generally between 100 and 104 degrees — are meant to supplement the beloved old Grotto. A large, communal, spring-fed pool surrounded by Edenic greenery and smaller soaking tubs, the Grotto has a warm cascade that doubles as a head, neck and shoulder massage. For an official treatment, however, you’ll need to visit the spa, where the 90-minute TBP Double Body Scrub, $245, is hard to beat. (Imagine a salt scrub followed by a cornmeal scrub and a soak in sage-infused warm mineral water.) There’s also an ever-expanding menu of classes, with a schedule of 60 to 70 options a week, from classics like yoga to novelties like natural fragrance-making.

For anyone who prefers to keep things private, each of four new Grove Villa Suites comes with its own spring-fed teak tub (as well as a fire pit, a patio space and extra-large rooms). But whichever lodgings, classes and spa treatments you choose, one thing is nonnegotiable if you see it on the menu: the sticky toffee cake with locally sourced dates. Rooms from $265.




Sahred From Source link Travel

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