Coachella, California

COACHELLA, California POISED FOR GROWTH K nown as the “City of Eternal Sunshine”, Coachella, California is the easternmost city in the Coachella Valley region. Largely a rural and agricultural community in the desert, Coachella lies 28 miles east of Palm Springs, 130 miles east of Los Angeles, and just ten miles northwest of the Salton Sea, California’s largest inland lake. This area came into being as a place on the map when Jason L. Rector, known as the town’s founder, established a mesquite wood terminal on a Southern Pacific Railroad siding from where lumber was hauled to market in Los Angeles. The original name of the town, founded in 1876, was Woodspur. In the 1880s, the indigenous Cahuilla tribe sold their land plots to the railroads for new lands east of the current town site, and in the 1890s, a few hundred traqueros, Mexican railroad track workers, took up settlement along the tracks. In 1901, the citizens of Woodspur voted on a new name for their community and, at a town hall AT A GLANCE COACHELLA, CALIFORNIA WHAT: A city of 47,000 WHERE: 28 miles east of Palm Springs and 130 miles east of Los Angeles WEBSITE: www. coachella.org