The desert has compelled countless creatives to document its varied landscape. These individuals captured it in prose.
PHOTO COURTESY VISIT GREATER PALM SPRINGS
The Desert (1901)
John C. Van Dyke
The seminal book on the Mojave, Sonoran, and Colorado deserts unfolds with rich, sensory descriptions of their land, light, flora, fauna, and ferocity. However, scholars — particularly the late University of Arizona English professor and author Peter Wild — argue that Van Dyke, an art historian, fabricated many of the accounts of his 1898 journey, likely gleaning details from his rancher brother Theodore’s journals and other sources and infusing his own observations and philosophies. Nevertheless, the book is an enduring classic that has been in continual publication for longer than a century.
The Land of Little Rain (1903)
Mary Austin
After moving with her family from Illinois to the edge of the San Joaquin Valley in 1888, Austin spent 15 years hopscotching from one desert community to another, inventorying the flora and fauna and deepening her compassion for Indigenous and migrant people. In her first book, The Land of Little Rain, Austin expresses the divinity of the natural world and our interactions with it, for better or worse, in a series of essays.
The Wonders of the California Desert (1906)
George Wharton James
The England native was a prolific writer on the American desert, publishing more than 40 books and many magazine articles about California and the Southwest. This two-volume effort brings together 25 years of observations and experiences of the desert’s land illustrated with about 300 pen-and-ink sketches by the early desert painter Carl Eytel, whose own prolific journals informed much of James’ text.
Under the Sky in California (1915)
Charles Francis Saunders
Charles Francis Saunders and his new wife, Elizabeth, arrived in Palm Springs in 1902. With the guidance of artist Carl Eytel, Saunders explored the desert landscape and later distilled what he saw into the first chapter of Under the Sky in California, a travelogue describing his trips throughout the Golden State. The enchanting essays in the book cover wide ground, from Franciscan missions and Indian graveyards to gold-prospecting sites and agricultural outposts.
California Desert Trails (1919)
J. Smeaton Chase
More than 100 years ago, Chase, an adventurous writer and photographer, set out on a two-year journey riding on horseback and camping on the desert from Palm Springs to Blythe and back to the eastern Coachella Valley. In painstaking detail, he chronicled his epic experience in California Desert Trails. Chase was particularly fond of the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountains cradling the Coachella Valley and was among the earliest advocates for their preservation.
Our Araby: Palm Springs and the Garden of the Sun (1920)
J. Smeaton Chase
This charming, pocket-size volume is one of the first travel books about Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. Illustrated with Chase’s own photographs, it succinctly introduces the animals, plants, and Native Americans that populated the area before it became a posh resort destination. The original hardcover edition includes a folded map in the back cover.
The California Deserts (1933)
Edmund C. Jaeger
Jaeger was the dean of the California deserts, a zoology professor, and a prolific writer whose magazine articles and books helped generations of visitors understand our extreme landscape. This book’s table of contents essentially inventories Jaeger’s knowledge, from the adaptive flora and fauna to the extreme climate and conditions. His lay prose makes The California Deserts an accessible and enduring resource.
On Desert Trails: Today and Yesterday (1961)
Randall Henderson
Where most early writers tended to the natural aspects of the desert, Henderson, a journalist by trade, was more interested in its people — the Native Americans, pioneers, developers, and variety of artists, eccentrics, and oddballs. For the essays in this juicy volume, he drew on half a century as a reporter, editor, and publisher of Desert Magazine to share in colorful detail the stories of the people who animated the desert frontier.
Beckoning Desert (1962)
Ed Ainsworth
The longtime Los Angeles Times editor and columnist, who had a home near the Salton Sea in its heyday, wrote several books about California and the West, as well as many articles for publications such as Randall Henderson’s Desert Magazine. Ainsworth is at his best in Beckoning Desert, introducing the charismatic figures who helped shape and season the Coachella Valley from the pioneer days to the midcentury.
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968)
Edward Abbey
The cult classic unfolds in vivid autobiographical accounts of the author’s adventures as a ranger at Arches National Monument (now Park). His pointed prose often comes with a large serving of philosophy, environmental and political. Following chapters about animals, plants, climate, Indigenous people, and cultural sites and artifacts, Abbey deftly turns to the human impacts on all the above.
The McCallum Saga: The Story of the Founding of Palm Springs (1973)
Katherine Ainsworth
Palm Springs Desert (now Art) Museum commissioned this author, the former city librarian of Monrovia, to research and tell the story of the pioneering McCallum family, particularly the influential “Judge” John Guthrie McCallum and his daughter, Pearl, whom he brought to the desert as a child in 1884. Pearl devoted her long life until she died in 1966 to her father’s dream of achieving a beautiful and productive desert community. Incidentally, the author was married to and sometimes collaborated with Ed Ainsworth (Beckoning Desert).
The Grumbling Gods: A Palm Springs Reader (2007)
Peter Wild
An essential reader for anyone who revels in the literary rabbit hole of Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, The Grumbling Gods surveys the history and allure of the area, beginning with Cahuilla tribal elder Francisco Patencio calling to renew the old ways for his people and ending with “cowboy mayor” Frank Bogert cataloging the development of the valley’s nine cities. In other entries, Helen Lukens Gaut recalls John Muir’s visit to Palm Springs, Carl Eytel exchanges letters with Edmund Jaeger, and William deBuys describes the “battlefield” of the Salton Sea National Wildlife Preserve.
No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California’s Deserts (2009)
Ruth Nolan
For this anthology, Ruth Nolan, associate professor of English at College of the Desert, cherrypicked excerpts from 80 authors. Some were only passing through the Mojave and Colorado deserts — John Steinbeck (Travels With Charley), Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild) — while others lingered longer to tell stories of famous outlaws (Willie Boy by Harry Lawton) and dreamers (The Man Who Captured Sunshine by Katherine Ainsworth), otherworldly landscapes (Rocks in the Shape of Billy Martin by Deanne Stillman), and troubled souls (The Salt by Tod Goldberg).
- READ NEXT: Desert Dreamers 11: The Writers.