Indian Wells is a city in Riverside County, California, in the Coachella Valley. Take a look below for 15 interesting and fun facts about Indian Wells, California, United States.
1. Incorporated in 1967, it lies in between the cities of Palm Desert and La Quinta.
2. As of the 2010 Census, the city population was 4,958.
3. The city hosts the sixth-largest tennis tournament in the world, the Indian Wells Masters tennis tournament, presently known as the BNP Paribas Open.
4. The Indian Wells Masters is one of nine ATP World Tour Masters 1000 high-level events operated by the Association of Tennis Professionals, and one of the four WTA Premier Mandatory tournaments of the Women’s Tennis Association.
5. It is held at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, which contains the second-largest tennis-specific stadium in the world.
6. As early as 1820, the area now known as Indian Wells was the site of a thriving Indian village, as reported by W.P. Blade, a Smithsonian Institution geologist.
7. A decade later, when gold was discovered on the Colorado River, William D. Bradshaw built a trail from Los Angeles through the desert to the gold mines.
8. The Alexander and Company Stage Line used the trail to transport prospectors and Indian Wells became an important stop along the trail. Competition from the Southern Pacific Railroad caused the route to be abandoned briefly in 1875 before being reactivated by the Wells Fargo Company the following year.
9. Over the next decades, settlers gradually arrived in the area and date palm ranches became profitable.
10. The area’s first golf courses were opened in the 1950s at the Eldorado Country Club and the Indian Wells Country Club. In 1957, Desi Arnaz opened his Indian Wells Hotel (forerunner to the Indian Wells Resort Hotel).
11. In 1960, Arnold Palmer won the first Bob Hope Desert Classic golf tournament. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a regular Indian Wells visitor and later an Eldorado homeowner.
12. In an election held June 27, 1967, to avoid being annexed by neighboring cities such as Palm Desert, the inhabitants of Indian Wells voted to incorporate as a city.
13. On July 14, 1967, Indian Wells became California’s 400th city and the 16th in Riverside County. Since then, Indian Wells has continued to grow, with the development of resort hotels, golf courses and luxury residential areas.
14. Indian Wells is a largely Republican city. Since its incorporation, all Republican candidates for president and governor have carried Indian Wells, with the six Republican presidential candidates from 1968 to 1988, and the seven Republican gubernatorial candidates from 1970 to 1994 each carrying the city by a margin of at least 53 points.
15. Even as both the state of California and Riverside County trended more Democratic from the 1990s onward, the GOP presidential and gubernatorial candidates have continued to carry Indian Wells by large, albeit smaller margins; most recently, Donald Trump carried the city by a margin of 20.69% in his 2020 re-election bid.
