Desert Days: Long Life

The growing population of year-round residents in the Palm Springs area underscores what "snowbirds" have known for years -- it's a destination for health. Native Americans found it first, inhabiting the canyons where the largest natural fan palm oases in the US are located. Government mapping of natural hot springs mineral pools, in what is now downtown Palm Springs, led to health-seeking visitors in the early 20th century. Palm Springs' entertainment heyday as Hollywood's winter playground is reflected in the street names -- such as Frank Sinatra Drive, Ginger Rogers Drive, and Dinah Shore Drive.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the city of Palm Springs took a dive while other oasis-fed mirages grew up in the area -- Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, and La Quinta, among them. But today, supported by dozens of spas and a major medical center, including the Betty Ford Center, the entire area has a year-round exuberance.

Thirty years ago, the city of Palm Springs was bleak and cheap, as healthy newer developments grew with transplanted Midwesterners and other retirees in winter. The retirees are still here, but to attract the young and hip, Palm Springs itself has been undergoing a facelift. While its neighboring communities along Highway 111 maintain their homogenous suburban resemblance shelted in cool stucco, tile roofs, aquamarine swimming pools, and lush tropical foliage, Palm Springs has become a playground for architects and designers seeking to make statements in Retro and Desert Modern. Attesting to its recovered glamour, the Palm Springs International Film Festival earlier this year drew 100,000 visitors.

"Mirage" remains the operative word for the area. Running along the valley alongside the rocky San Jacinto Mountains and the Santa Rosa Mountains, the series of towns in the Coachella Valley creates a 25-mile oasis of palms, gated communities, golf courses, and splashy resorts. My two favorite destinations are the La Quinta Resort & Club and The Lodge at Rancho Mirage. La Quinta is a desert sanctuary with a spectacular spa and healing waters, backed up against the Santa Rosas, out of the way from the rest, and maintaining its vintage style (which began in 1926) with grace and class. The Lodge at Rancho Mirage, now a Rock Resort, is the former Ritz-Carlton, an elegant and posh retreat positioned up on the Santa Rosas over the desert valley. I always go there for a glass of wine on the terrace in early evening, in the heat of summer or the chill of winter, to gaze at the purple haze of sunset and the valley lights. In the summer heat, everything is very still, while in winter under a starry desert sky, glowing fireplace coals warm the surroundings.

One of the hot new properties is the Viceroy Palm Springs, once a favorite haunt of the film industry and renovated in Hollywood Regency style by hotel tycoon Brad Korzen and his decorator-wife Kelly Wearstler. It's part of the Kor Group, a chain of boutique hotels, including the ultra-hip Viceroy in Santa Monica.

Among the happening restaurants, Spencer's comes highly recommended with traditional European as well as Pacific Rim cuisine and a stone's throw from the towering Mt. San Jacinto (10,804 feet high), itself a landmark for the area.