![]() ![]() It is an attraction that most city dwellers take for granted, and yet without it, the desert, even this one, would be a wasteland …Īs a plaid-shirted man with a divining rod hobbles his way towards a sweeping desert vista, the music swells, and Gordon’s voice reaches a final crescendo. It is the one single element that has brought more men to the desert throughout history than any other attraction. It makes man’s labors in the sun fruitful, and the soil rich with life-giving nourishment. ![]() "Borrego Springs is not just any desert," he says, his baritone voice booming over a montage of luscious foliage.įor it has one highly desirable element that sets it apart from others. What was it about this desert’s seemingly barren plains that allowed boosters’ imaginations to run wild? In a 1964 promotional video for Borrego, actor Gale Gordon of I Love Lucy explained the secret behind the valley’s unique appeal. To Borrego’s founders, the town’s future seemed as ripe for the picking as one of the DiGiorgio farms’ famously early table grapes. Country clubs and golf courses started cropping up left and right. Now, the town’s founders sought to follow in the footsteps of nearby Palm Springs, developing the community’s tourism industry in hopes of making it a verdant playground for the urban elite. The town had already begun to make a name for itself as a thriving farming outpost as Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley suburbanized rapidly to the north, the state’s agriculture had been pushed farther and farther inland, and by the 1940s the dusty plains of the Borrego Valley boasted acres of grapes, gladiolas, citrus. "The next Palm Springs." "The desert of plenty."It was the mid 1950s, and Borrego Springs-a tiny unincorporated community located smack in the middle of the sprawling Anza-Borrego Desert-was poised to become California’s next great oasis. "The last great frontier," people called it. ![]()
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