“Although a tiny airport was constructed in Palm Springs in 1928 for guests of the newly built El Mirador Hotel (now Desert Regional Medical Center), it was nothing more than a single dirt runway used predominantly by a small number of military aviators.
By the late 1930s, with the world on the brink of war, the United States Corps of Engineers launched a search for a sufficient space to build an Army Air Corps landing field. Due to the Coachella Valley’s consistently good weather and the shelter provided by the mountains from desert winds, the government decided to lease the Native American–owned property. The engineers built an A-frame terminal building and two runways…”
