Imagining El Paseo
You might say he was a dreamer. But Cliff Henderson was not the only one. With apologies to John Lennon, Henderson was a visionary who, in 1946, purchased 1,700 arid acres miles away from civilized Palm Springs and proceeded to lay out an imaginary town with a luxury shopping district. It seemed real enough to Henderson — so real, in fact, he built a thoroughfare called El Paseo and punctuated it with stately palm trees nearly a decade before the first store opened.
“I wanted a smart avenue,” Henderson said in a 1980 interview.
We now know those 1,700 acres as south Palm Desert. (In the early days, it was the only Palm Desert; the land north of Highway 111 was known as Palm Village.) Palm Desert consisted of a few homesteads and a lot of sand. The Shadow Mountain Club, another Henderson development, raised the town’s profile and became its sophisticated social center.
Today, El Paseo bustles with activity and remains a haven for relaxation and discovery. The street continues to evolve with a growing number of luxury retailers, fine eateries, art galleries, and personal and professional services.
Henderson, who died in 1984 at the age of 88, lived to see the early results of his master plan for that “smart” shopping district. We wonder if even he had imagined the architecturally stunning shopping and entertainment paradise that has matured on today’s El Paseo — an enriching and vital slice of the California desert experience.
