The Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians is composed of several small groups of Indians who were living in the modern day Palm Springs area when the Agua Caliente Reservation was established by the United States Government in 1896.
Archaeological research has shown that the Cahuilla have lived in the area for the past 350-500 years. The reservation occupies 32,000 acres (130 km²), of which 6,700 acres (27 km²) lie within the city limits, making the Agua Caliente band the city's largest landowner. The reservation land was originally composed of alternating squares of land laid out across the desert in a checkerboard pattern.
The alternating, non-reservation squares, were provided by the United States Government to the Southern Pacific Railroad as an incentive to bring rail lines through the open desert. Tribal enrollment is currently estimated at between 296 and 365 people.
The Cahuilla name for the area was "Se-Khi" (boiling water). In the early 1800s, Spanish explorers named the area "Agua Caliente" (hot water). An alternative use of palm is revealed in the November 1992 issue of Art of California. At least one Spanish explorer referred to the area as la Palma de la Mano de dios or "The Palm of God's hand," (page 45).
The current name for the area is "Palm Springs" which likely came into common usage in the mid-1860s when the land was first surveyed by U.S. Government surveyors who noted that a local mineral spring was located at the base of “two bunches of palms". By 1884 when San Francisco attorney John Guthrie McCallum settled in Palm Springs, the name was already in wide acceptance.
Year-round living
As the 1970s drew to a close, increasing numbers of retirees moved to the Coachella Valley. As a result, Palm Springs began to evolve from a virtual ghost town in the summer to a year-round community. Businesses and hotels that used to shutter for the months of July and August instead remained open all summer.
As commerce grew, so too did the number of families with children.
