The trees of summer: Smoke trees, cacti and palms have long been revered by desert locals

Palm tree in the desert. (Photo: Palm Springs Historical Society/Special to The Desert Sun)

Tracy Conrad
Special to The Desert Sun

Signaling the end of spring, smoke trees in the desert washes become dotted with tiny bluish-purple blooms at the beginning of summer each year.

The color is deep and distinct and has been revered by desert dwellers for decades. Nellie Coffman herself was known to berate anyone who dared chop down a smoke tree.

Most visitors to the desert had no appreciation for the tree having never seen it in bloom. Visitors evaporated from Palm Springs in May as temperatures increased threatening the coming summer.

But local residents, like Coffman, knew better. Agnes Pelton famously painted “Smoke Tree in Bloom” to be auctioned off to benefit the newly formed Desert Art Center.

Carl Bray, fancied for himself the sobriquet “painter of smoke trees” as they featured regularly on his canvases. Other desert artists like John Hilton, William Darling and Jimmy Swinnerton were captivated by the indigo blooms, buzzing with bees, and memorialized their brief early summer show in paint.

Spring in the desert is spectacular, but summer is even more impressive for the cacti, trees and scrubs that survive it.

Wise and observant desert dwellers had special reverence for the plant species found in this harsh environment.

The village of Palm Springs took its name from the indigenous palms, found in the ravines of the surrounding mountains. The native California fan palm signaled the presence of water to early settlers and Native Americans. The Cahuilla used the fruit of the Washingtonia filifera for food and its fronds for weaving and roofing.

The importation of date palms to the area a century ago started the comparison of the Coachella Valley to the deserts of the Middle East and sparked an agricultural industry. Soon there was cultivation of all sorts of palm species as ornamental trees.

Grand allees of palms would soon line the boulevards of Los Angeles and San Diego. In Palm Springs, Ruth Hardy, owner of the Ingleside Inn and the first councilwoman, campaigned for planting palms along both sides of highway 111, engendering its name of Palm Canyon Drive.

Soldiering trees marched all the way to the Indian Canyons where the native palms could be found in abundance; the basis for the village itself.

The original summer survivor in the desert is, of course, the cactus. Reverence for its diversity was elevated to an art form by Chester “Cactus Slim” and Patricia Moorten. The Moortens famously saved cacti in the path of road construction for use as ornamentals in gardens.

They collected unusual specimens from all over the desert southwest and Baja Mexico, bringing them home to Palm Springs and transplanting them into the garden plot around their new home (purchased from photographer and painter Stephen Willard who was leaving town because it had gotten too crowded.)

A botanist trained at University of Southern California, Patricia published her classic book, “Desert Plants for Desert Gardens” much before the idea of using native plants in a sustainable way became the norm. The magazine Popular Mechanics even featured an article on the Moortens in March of 1960.

The Moortens’ appreciation of cacti was akin to Nellie’s reverence of smoke trees. Locals survived through the tough summers to be rewarded with mild winters and glorious springs, just like native trees, scrubs and cacti.

Locals tried to cultivate an appreciation of the subtleties of desert plants by memorializing the spectacular blooms in postcards and pictures. And they tried to inculcate that appreciation through guidebooks for newcomers.

Melba Bennett, the founder of many Palm Springs institutions including the “Palm Springs Hat,” the Palm Springs Historical Society and the Palm Springs Garden Club, wrote a little book just for this purpose. Meant to help new arrivals cultivate a proper desert garden, her little book had practical advice and was annotated in the margins with little whimsical doodles to emphasize her points. The book contains charming descriptions and recommendations gleaned from years of hard work and experimentation in her garden at Deep Well Ranch.

Plants were chosen for their riot of blooms in springtime and their ability to survive the blistering heat of summer.

The diminutive indigo blooms of smoke trees were complemented by the exuberant deep orange bouquets offered by Poinciana, Mexican bird of paradise.

Bennett counseled a variety of colors and shapes in the composition of a garden, and a rotation of flowering to provide interest in the garden through the coming long summer months.

Smoke trees in full indigo bloom are a desert paradox

Smoke trees.

Words by Ruth Nolan
Photographs by Millicent Harvey
Desert Sun Magazine

When it comes to iconic desert trees, Palm Springs is famous for its palm-filled canyons, while the Mojave Desert is home to the ubiquitous Joshua tree. The sultry smoke tree also fills our washes and age-old flood plains, holding its rightful place as one of the most iconic shrub-like trees of the Coachella Valley and vast tracts of the California and Arizona deserts.

The low-voiced, puff-shaped smoke tree (Psorothamnus spinosus) enchants through different seasons – a winter-long, half-dead appearance of tangled brown branches and scant white-green, tiny leaves, and then this: a short, late spring season of vivid, dark blue-violet colored flowers bursting from its seeming passivity that startle the desert sky and passersby with an unmistakable presence and unanticipated beauty.

Smoke trees in full indigo bloom are a desert paradox. Viewed from a canyon overlook down into a desolate, bone-dry desert wash, the purple hues burst from the trees below, making them sag with top-heavy abundance and the weight of their odd, proliferate beauty. The clusters of vivid color, illuminated by the desert’s fabled light and contrasted with stark, brown canyon walls and barren sand, resemble a bigger version of dark purple Fantasy grapes, grown and harvested in many eastern valley vineyards. They offer a sense of visual abundance and reassurance that this is, after all, a desert of life – as well as promises of ephemeral and lasting, if briefly witnessed, magnificence.

Walk up close to one of these powerfully blooming trees, and you’ll see that the indigo flowers are, individually, quite small, and resemble flowers on a pea plant, to which smoke trees are, incidentally, related. The desert at your feet will be covered with a sweet purple carpet of fallen and quickly drying blooms. This past May, as desert temperatures began to climb into triple digits and most of the seasonal visitors had already departed, smoke trees filled Coachella Valley washes with brilliant indigo hues for a few short weeks before fading back into hushed tones.

These vibrant colors are among the fleeting beauty of all desert flowers, and offer deeply satisfying and inspirational views that keep many of us here, year after year, through unbearably long summers of staggering and dangerous heat, and prolonged months without rain. Smoke trees, in all their full-bloomed glory, offer a long drink of cool beauty to all thirsty souls in the desert who have waited so long to sip.

A wise teacher

Smoke trees don’t announce themselves with the sort of loud, outward pronouncements made by palms or Joshua trees. Instead, they weave their way into one’s consciousness, waiting patiently for the intrepid sort of desert rat or visitor who has time to notice, and maybe explore, the magic held within the smoke.

Inside the rugged, forested feel of a single tree or, more likely, a cluster of trees – spaced, like most desert plants, a respectful distance apart and running predictably up and down the wash or flood plain that nourishes its lifespan and offspring – you’ll see desert light filtering in. It gently touches the brown, seemingly lifeless lower branches and illuminates the iridescent, wintergreen-toned upper branches, bringing the purple flowers to brilliant life as if in a cloud.

Each baby tree, brought to life from the odd but vital process of scarification, in which its seed is scratched from the violent movement of sand and rocks during flash floods, sinks a tap root deep into the earth until it finds water. In this sense, the smoke tree is also a wise desert teacher and flood zone signifier: Seasoned campers know not to set up camp wherever there are smoke trees, although for the vast majority of time, water is not to be seen or found in what appears to be an extremely arid land.

The time of flowering for smoke trees is brief, only a few weeks from mid-May through early June, and like many desert plants, their yearly time of blooming can be either abundant or sparse, depending on rainfall, soil temperatures and other factors. This past bloom in spring was one of the most fantastic in recent memory.

Symbol of silence

For most of the year, smoke trees quietly and instinctively scale back their presence, in a process known as “die-back,” common to many other desert plants. While waiting patiently in the rain shadow looming above our canyons and washes, smoke trees take on the brittle appearance of being almost dead, or dying. In fact, the process of dropping most of its tiny light green leaves, except in the top branches of the trees, is what helps the smoke tree survive and even thrive.

The appearance of the smoke tree in winter and other dry months is what has evoked its iconic name: These are times when it appears most like wisps of smoke wafting across canyon floors and washes. But to those who listen, and look, and wait patiently, the very desert-defining presence of the smoke tree comes vividly alive.

The collective voice of these near-invisible trees was certainly heard by the many plein-air, impressionistic desert artists of the earlier to mid-20th century. Dubbed the Smoke Tree School, painters such as Carl Eytel, John Hilton and Carl Bray – whose home and gallery are commemorated along Highway 111 in Indian Wells – brought the smoke tree, in both its more ghostly, silent and wildly blossoming violet-hued incarnations to life, and memorialized the timeless feel of the untouched desert in paintings that emblemize its ubiquitous presence.

The song of this year’s splashy, violet-blue smoke tree super bloom may have faded away, but its melodic imprint remains. Like all desert plant life, its time of flowering is brief, and perhaps memorialized all the more because of its brevity.

The smoke tree remains, at all times of year, a symbol of the silence and adaptability to times of overabundance and drought that are endemic to desert living – and a talisman of renewal, transformation and hope. It represents many qualities that so many of us come here for: a rare, tranquil stillness and the graceful surrender to the splendor of the desert’s wide open and seemingly endless girth, one tempered only by mountains, canyon walls and precious dearth.

Explore More

SMOKE TREES CAN BE FOUND IN ABUNDANCE LOCALLY IN ARABY WASH IN PALM SPRINGS; ALONG HAYSTACK ROAD'S EASTERN SIDEWALK IN PALM DESERT; AT THE LIVING DESERT ZOO AND GARDENS; IN THOUSAND PALMS OASIS PRESERVE AND ALONG MCCALLUM TRAIL IN COACHELLA VALLEY PRESERVE; AND ALONG BOX CANYON ROAD IN THE MECCA HILLS.

The New Sublime

Artists working at the Salton Sea capture the beauty and decay with a fresh perspective

Christopher Landis, North Shore Yacht Club Pool, 1994, digital print, 30x40 inches

Ann Japenga
Palm Springs Life

You drive in from Interstate 10 or Palm Springs, turn south at Mecca, and pass fields of peppers and the old artists’ colony called Desert Camp. When you see the first glint of blue in the distance, your spirits likely will lift. A giant lake in the desert is a miracle in light, space, and water. Enjoy that first glance at the Salton Sea.

What you see and feel next will vary. If you were raised on Sierra Club calendars and Ansel Adams panoramas, you might focus on the crumpled Mecca Hills and the big vistas of the Santa Rosa Mountains across the sea. If you grew up with Love Canal and Chernobyl, you might zero in on abandoned trailers, dying palms, and fish bones.

For decades, artists have come to the sea to put their stamp on its waters. In April, the Salton Sea History Museum in the restored North Shore Yacht Club opened its inaugural exhibition, Valley of the Ancient Lake: Works Inspired by the Salton Sea.

Curated by Deborah Martin (with historical works and memorabilia provided by Jennie Kelly), the exhibition features 10 artists who focus their work on the sea. To contextualize their paintings, drawings, and photographs, it’s helpful to know they follow the path of several generations of artists.

The first artists influenced by the sea lived around its shore and made art from the land itself. Indians carved petroglyphs in the boulders and scratched pictures in the tufa of the ancient shoreline. Native American potters made ollas from the milky-white clay cradling Agua Grande (an Indian name for the sea).

Next, expedition artists accompanied railroad surveys. In 1853, artist Charles Koppel came through with geologist William Blake and made etchings of Travertine Point and the ancient shoreline across the sea from the yacht club. For a while, the inland lake was called Blake’s Sea.

After the expedition artists, California Impressionist painters brought the style of capturing light that spread from France to the U.S. East Coast and finally to California and the desert in the early 1900s. There were no sunken trailers then, but still the desert was foreign to artists from greener places. Some saw bleakness and desolation. Others — such as Fred Grayson Sayre — saw paradise. Art collector Allan Seymour was so inspired by Sayre’s vision of “the Turquoise Sea” that he bought a home at North Shore.

As Impressionism faded, a lively and little-known era in Salton Sea art began. In 1940, one of the great Western artists, Maynard Dixon, lived in a shack along the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks near North Shore. He made a sketch for his painting Destination Unknown with fellow artist John Hilton posing as a hobo. Painters Jimmy Swinnerton and Clyde Forsythe visited him at the shack he called Desert Camp, as did Indian Wells artist Carl Bray and Desert Magazine Editor Randall Henderson.

Los Angeles Times columnist Ed Ainsworth bought property at North Shore and built a housing development known as Palm Island Estates, which eventually found Hilton, Swinnerton, Forsythe, Orpha Klinker, and Bill Bender congregating for his makeshift salon. Ainsworth’s 1960 book Painters of the Desert remains the classic on early desert painters.

By the time Ainsworth died in 1968, the open landscape had given way to tract housing and freeways. Flooding from storms damaged the yacht club jetty and submerged buildings along the shoreline. Agricultural runoff polluted the sea and repelled tourists. The increasing salinity of the water gummed up boats’ engines, and water-skiers decamped for the Colorado River. The yacht club became an emblem of decay. For a growing number of Americans, their only exposure to the Salton Sea came from Goth fashion photos taken at the pigeon-infested, graffiti-scarred, busted-up yacht club.

As the land changed, a new wave of artists tackled the degradation head-on. In the 1970s, the New Topographics photographers declared “an end to romantic nature.” Photographers Robert Adams, Lewis Balz, and others influenced young artists and photographers nationwide to turn toward the man-mauled, nonidealized landscape.

Valley of the Ancient Lake showcases the traditional, apocalyptic, and everything in between. Martin, a realist painter, places ruined buildings within luminous landscapes, while Eric Merrell works his canvases in the Early California tradition.

Beautifully tragic photographs by Christopher Landis, Kim Stringfellow, and Bill Leigh Brewer long to save the sea, while interventionist Cristopher Cichocki says his images of DayGlo-painted dead fish help bring forth “a new awareness of man and nature in conflict.”

Seymour found plein air artist Andrew Dickson painting one day on a ridge near his North Shore home and invited him to dinner. That’s how glad he was to see a traditional landscape painter at the Salton Sea. (Dickson has been coming to North Shore to visit his grandparents since age 7; his grandmother still lives there.)

Some art critics have foretold the dawning of a New Sublime, a return to the pastoral vision of America’s early landscape painters but with a contemporary edge we haven’t even thought of yet.

It comes back to that longing for the sea. If their longing is pure and sustained, the artists you see in this exhibition might be the ones to accomplish what politicians and environmentalists have so far been unable to achieve: to dream back Blake’s Sea, dream back Agua Grande.

Salton Sea From the North Shore, 2011

Mary-Austin Klein, oil on Dura-Lar mounted on board, 10x34 inches

Information: http://www.saltonseamuseum.org/

Artist's gallery a must-see

Jamie Lee Pricer
The Desert Sun



Carl Bray (right) spent time in the 1950s with Indian Wells neighbor and artist Fred Chisnell. (Courtesy of The Bray family)



His canvas of choice is a slab of masonite, perhaps because it is a sturdy medium when you paint in railroad yards or out in the desert.

His most popular subject is the wispy smoke tree that grows in washes.

His painting — influenced by days spent near the Salton Sea with iconic desert artists such as John Hilton, Maynard Dixon, Bill Bender and Clyde Forsythe — ranks him as a prized California artist.

His Indian Wells gallery was a Coachella Valley landmark for nearly 50 years.

Carl Bray was born in 1917 in Prague, Okla. He studied art during the Depression at Miami College in the Dust Bowl state, while working on farms to pay his tuition.

He moved West to find work in 1936 and landed a job with the railroad in Southern California, where he worked for more than 40 years. He painted almost every day, either at the railroad yard or later at one of his studios.

He married his wife, Luella, in 1939. The young couple moved 20 miles east of Niland, little more than a lonely railroad siding. Despite the lack of creature comforts, including air conditioning, the Brays learned to love the desert, and it was here that a shy Bray met the other iconic artists.

The railroad job took Bray and his wife to the Los Angeles area during WWII, where they bought property in rural El Monte, built a house and started their family of four children.

The desert beckoned, though. In the early 1950s, Bray bought a Highway 111 frontage lot in Indian Wells for $1,000. Working weekends and vacations, he built a house and gallery, and the family moved to the desert in 1953. Their backyard, now a golf course, was once the site of one the largest Cahuilla villages in the valley, Kavinish.

At the time there was little development in Indian Wells. The Brays' neighbors included a few cabins, a dance hall, two small groceries, two gas stations, a dance hall and a café. By the early 1960s, those businesses had been demolished, and the Bray gallery remained a signal outpost for miles in either direction on Highway 111.

Bray's art was popular, and people, including a steady fan base of celebrities, stopped by the gallery regularly.

Done in 2008, this 8-by-10-inch painting is of Carl Bray’s
most popular subject, smoke trees. (Courtesy of Adele Ruxton)

Bray continued working for the railroad while his wife ran the gallery. In the early 1960s, the Brays started to spend summers in Taos, where he had a gallery on the plaza for several years.

Bray retired from the railroad and continued to paint. He figures he's painted more than 6,500 smoke trees. Through the years, he has won dozens of art awards, demonstrated art on TV and has one-man shows throughout the nation and overseas. His paintings are owned by celebrities and held by the city of Indian Wells in its permanent collection.

The couple sold their Indian Wells property in about 2000 and moved to Banning.

Luella died a year ago, and the new owners of the Bray property lost it recently to foreclosure. It's now owned by Indian Wells, and the fate of the city's oldest building is not clear.

Ann Japenga contributed to this story.

Desert artist Carl Bray's historic home and gallery threatened

Simlar to recent efforts to demolish the Rancho Dos Palmas home of John W. Hilton, another desert artist's historic home and gallery is in peril

by Daniel Rohlfing
Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery Newsletter


Carl Glen Bray.


Carl Glen Bray came to the California desert during the depression. In classes sponsored by the WPA, he studied painting with Maynard Dixon and Russell Swan. He became a popular lecturer for college classes, television shows and art groups. In 1956, he settled a home and art gallery in Indian Wells and had developed a close friendship with artist/engraver Fred Chisnall. Fred Chisnall was an artist credited by John W. Hilton as his most demanding and most effective art teacher.

Adele Ruxton of the Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation wrote the Indian Wells City Council about the matter in a January 7 letter. Here is the text of that letter.

Re: Carl Bray House and Gallery -- Please let it be noted that the Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation, at its regular meeting on January 6, 2009, approved a motion to request that the City of Indian Wells maintain a 90 day moratorium on the possible demolition of the Carl Bray House and Gallery. It was only on the morning of the meeting that the board learned of the fact that the city had purchased the house from the seller. It had always been the hope that whoever owned the property would work with the IWHPF to help preserve an important and historic site within the city limits.

At this point in time we want only to hear of the city’s intentions and to ask that at some point “our side” can be presented for review. In the event that the buildings must come down, we will need the time to photograph, describe, register, etc. so that the site may become one to be recognized with some kind of distinctive marker. And we would like to see that the Carl Bray Gallery sign be a part of the Indian Wells archives.

Do bear in mind that the Bray house and gallery are one of a kind and havebeen a travel stop for thousands of tourists over the years. To remove the landmark might be detrimental to the integrity of the city and the hope to preserve its legacy.

We ask of you again to honor our request for a moratorium.

Ann Japenga contributed to this story

Desert Sunset on Mountains by Carl Glen Bray

Rancho Dos Palmas Gets Historical Designation

Roy Wilson, District 4 Supervisor
Riverside County Board of Supervisors
News Release

The Riverside County Historical Commission voted to designate Rancho Dos Palmas a Historical Site at their meeting on Jan. 17. Dos Palmas, a favorite hangout decades ago for artists, rock hounds and celebrities, is located in the desert just east of North Shore.

An old adobe building is the chief man-made feature on the site, currently owned and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM has been considering razing the site because of seismic and subsidence issues.

The site also contains other cultural, recreational and habitat resources.

The next step toward historical designation would be a decision by the Board of Supervisors at a future board meeting in Riverside.

“I am now moving forward with the application process for the National Register,” says Dos Palmas champion Jenny Kelly, who is also founder of the East Valley Historical Society and is a member of the North Shore Community Council. “I don’t know what's involved in gaining approval for the National Register, but I have every confidence we meet all the criteria for that designation.”

The East Valley Historical Society is also examining the potential of Hilton's Art & Gem Shop, across Highway 86 from the old Valerie Jean date shop.

“The owner's have requested a written lease proposal for the property. They are leaning towards demolition if we don't come up with a financial arrangement,” Kelly says. “Unfortunately, our fledgling East Valley Historical Society is not in a financial position to lease the property. I’m open to ideas and suggestions.”

The Riverside County Historical Commission is charged with discovering and identifying persons, events and places of historical significance in Riverside County and advises the Board of Supervisors in historical matters. The Commission consists of eleven members, appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

The Historical Commission generally meets at 1:30 p.m. the third Thursday of January, March, May, July, September and November. The agenda gives the meeting location. Occasionally the meeting date will change. The agenda will reflect the new date.

Park District staff provide support to the Historical Commission and can be reached at (951) 955-4306 or (951) 955-4310 or by email at lnorris@co.riverside.ca.us. Mailing address is: Riverside County Historical Commission Riverside County Park District, 4600 Crestmore Road Riverside, CA 92509.

More East Valley Historical Commission info is available in the Oct. 12 story.

Dispute over desert house could pit nature against art

Rodrigo Peña / The Press-Enterprise
Jennie Kelly, 57, of North Shore, shows a branding iron with the initials d-p inside the adobe building that she wants to preserve.


By STEVE MOORE
The Press-Enterprise

NORTH SHORE - The old adobe building near the oases ringed with shaggy palms welcomed Hollywood, hosted Gen. George Patton and inspired a desert landscape painter.

But if a federal agency prevails, the ranch house where John William Hilton created his masterpieces could be demolished.

The Bureau of Land Management says surveys show that Rancho Dos Palmas -- with its many additions -- lacks historical significance.

A preservationist group disagrees.

"To wipe out all that history ... my jaw just dropped," said Jennie Kelly, a spokeswoman for Friends of Dos Palmas.

"An awful lot of people want to see the ranch house saved.

"It carries a special place in our hearts."

The dispute is playing out on a huge nature preserve near the Salton Sea.

Now, in a twist of fate, Hilton's landscape scenes could help save the beloved building, Kelly said.
Friends of Dos Palmas members said the artist's growing renown could get the ranch house listed on the federal government's National Register of Historic Places.

Panoramic View

Hilton lived and painted at Rancho Dos Palmas between 1938 and 1942. He observed the desert while painting from a rooftop sundeck over the ranch house. The artist captured the landscape's solitary beauty by using a knife instead of a brush and adding beeswax to oil paints.

When he wasn't carving out a canvas masterpiece, Hilton acted as a desert guide for Patton, whose nickname was "Old Blood and Guts."

They scouted out locations for tank training maneuvers carried out at Camp Young during World War II, according to a promotional biography written by Arizona art gallery owner Gary Fillmore.

Hilton, who died in 1983, belonged to a fraternity of about 15 Southern California desert artists active during the 1920s through 1940s, according to Fillmore, owner of the Blue Coyote Gallery.

Today, artists who painted the Southern California desert find their works undervalued compared with the rest of the market, Fillmore said.

A 16 inch by 20 inch desert scene by Hilton fetches about $4,000 to $6,000 and some of his top works command $10,000 to $15,000, experts said.

But over the next decades, Hilton and other desert painters will gain stature and their works will cost more in galleries, Fillmore said.

"He was a great artist, who as time goes on, will be much appreciated," Fillmore said.
Hilton's work will join that of other desert painters at a Sept. 15 exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Talking It Out

Meanwhile, negotiations continue between Friends of Dos Palmas and the Bureau of Land Management.

"There's no threat of us doing anything to those structures until we work through this process, " said John Kalish, field manager for the agency's office in North Palm Springs. "We've made that commitment."

The aging ranch house may be charming, but the bureau's primary role at the almost 15,000-acre Dos Palmas Preserve involves running a wildlife refuge and restoring habitat for threatened and endangered species, he said.

They include the grouse-sized, endangered Yuma clapper rail, which delights bird watchers with its distinctive "kek kek kek" call at daybreak or sunset. Another is the adaptable desert pupfish, which can survive in an environment almost twice as salty as the ocean or in fresh water.

Because the preserve's main job is to manage and restore wildlife habitat, there's no federal money available for restoring the ranch house, Kalish said.

Long History

For about 80 years, Rancho Dos Palmas has kept a quiet vigil in the midst of nature.
The house features a step-down great room highlighted by a rock fireplace, plank ceiling and an array of artifacts, including a saddle on a wooden table, a branding iron on a window ledge, mounted long horns and a bobcat pelt splayed over the fireplace mantle.

On the wall, there's a cattle brand registration for Rancho Dos Palmas dated 1938.

Nearby, actor Raymond Massey's framed, handwritten letter hangs on the wall -- mailed from Beverly Hills and thanking his hosts for the fresh dates during his last visit.

For now, the ranch house about 13 miles southeast of Mecca can't entertain nature-loving tourists, the federal agency said.

A caretaker lived in the house until his death in December.

Rancho Dos Palmas doesn't meet current building codes, needs major, costly repairs and could be unsafe in an earthquake. Water piped into the house isn't safe for consumption, Kalish said.

The ranch house and a nearby bunkhouse, along with a shop building, won't be removed until at least December, according to agency officials. The marshland beneath would be restored and become a wildlife spot. The ranch house and a bunkhouse occupy about 8 acres.

Today, crews continue working nearby on a new, 4,000-square-foot shop for storing heavy equipment. The facility stores bulldozers and other equipment used to handle Tamarisk trees, which soak up water and create salty soil. A 2,000-square-foot operations center/caretaker's residence could get underway by fall of this year, officials said.

The Future

Meanwhile, Friends of Dos Palmas pursues an offensive aimed at saving the ranch house.

The group submitted an application seeking a county/state historical designation for Rancho Dos Palmas. They had a structural engineer visually inspect the old ranch house. And they're lobbying elected officials, including Congresswoman Mary Bono, R, Palm Springs, and County Supervisor Roy Wilson.

Land management officials say several possibilities could honor Rancho Dos Palmas' legacy while still allowing planned improvements at the preserve.

Those include leaving some adobe walls standing, erecting an interpretive kiosk detailing the history of the ranch house and salvaging period items that could be stored elsewhere in a museum-like setting, Kalish said.

Rancho Dos Palmas Adobe History

The Rancho Dos Palmas adobe house inside the Dos Palmas Preserve near North Shore was built in the 1920s.

• Rancho Dos Palmas was built in the 1920s out of handmade adobe brick.
• German-born entrepreneur Gertrude S. Tenderich converted the ranch into a guest lodge in the 1930s.
• John Hilton, noted desert landscape artist and legendary guide to General George S. Patton, once worked as a handyman at the ranch.
• Rancho Dos Palmas and the nearby bunkhouse are the last remaining structures at Dos Palmas Preserve, a marshy desert oasis near the northeast margin of the Salton Sea that is home to many threatened and endangered, as well as more common, animal species.
• The oasis was once a Bradshaw Stagecoach stop, and later a station for the Southern Pacific Railroad.