![]() ![]() We backtracked to Shield’s Date Garden in Indio. They are one of the most complete foods on Earth. Dates are heart-healthy and great for digestion. We would soon learn that our visit to the International Banana Museum in Mecca will also have to be postponed. This would prove to be one of several pandemic-related disappointments on our road trip. Unfortunately, we arrive only to discover the farm is closed to the public during the pandemic. Founded in 1912, it is the oldest date operation in the valley, committed to organic production there is no trace of chemical fertilizers or pesticides polluting the ground, water, and air. Though they have a number of locations between Coachella and Yuma, Arizona, I’m partial to their Oasis Date Gardens in Thermal. The Viking steers us toward Thermal and my favorite date operation: Woodspur Organic Date Farms. In Iraq, Syria, and North Africa, he discovered date varieties such as the Medjool and Deglet Noor, which thrived in the well-irrigated but arid conditions of the Coachella Valley. production - owes its existence to a global plant explorer named David Fairchild, who was dispatched in the 1890s to find crops for newly irrigated western lands. Date farming in the valley - which accounts for 95 percent of U.S. Indio was a pit stop for train watering, and the Salton Sea wouldn’t come into existence until 1905, when the Colorado River broke through a canal head gate and flooded the dry ancient seabed. It is peopled with mad Kurtzes who went upriver and never returned.īut first, we must explore the sex lives of dates.Īt the turn of the last century, the eastern end of the valley was not the huge agricultural oasis it is today. ![]() It is the putrid, environmentally disastrous center of the dark universe. ![]() Except that neither a single blade of grass nor any other trace of the golf course has survived. And that grass was confined to the tees and the putting greens. The gentleman idling with a tall boy outside Lorenzo’s Gas Station and Mini Mart in Desert Shores reckoned that the last time there was any grass on the course would have been about 2010 or 2011. Presumably, this was where one signed in, paid a fee, and talked over wind and greens conditions with the resident pro before challenging the nine-hole, par 3 course. The strongest clue was the red-rimmed concrete slab where the mobile home/clubhouse once stood. It indicated that we were standing at or near the location of the first tee of the West Shores Golf Club, an abandoned course near Desert Shores on the Salton Sea. It might have been years since it held water or had enough bristles to thoroughly scrub a Titleist 2. The ball cleaner was lying in the dirt and disintegrating before our very eyes. It probably wouldn’t have helped to wash my balls. ![]()
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