Palm Desert is a city in Riverside County, California, in the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs area), approximately 11 miles east of Palm Springs in the Coachella Valley.
The population was 41,155 at the 2000 census. Other cites in the Coachella Valley are Cathedral City, Coachella, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells, Indio, La Quinta, Palm Springs, and Rancho Mirage.
The city was one of the state's fastest growing in the 1980s and 1990s, began with 11,801 in 1980 to doubled to 23,650 in 1990 to doubled again to 35,000 in five years. A major center of growth in the Palm Springs area, it was a popular retreat for "snowbirds" from colder climates (the Eastern and Northern US, and Canada), who swell its population by an estimated 31,000 each winter, but in the past couple of years Palm Desert has seen more residents become "full-timers" (mainly from California came for affordable but high-valued home prices) who now live in the city year-round.
Palm Desert may have 75,000 to 85,000 at January 1st as the "season" peaks and decreases by half at July 1st as the hot desert summer comes by.
Palm Desert is still viewed as a socio-politically conservative bastion, but shifted to a more liberal socio-political/cultural environment in the late 1990s. |
