Palm Springs – Oddities

This is one of my favorite types of architecture.  Scavenger, innovative, a tad crazy and an absolute representation of the person that built it.  This is the home of Cabot Yerxa.  He was the son of a fabulously wealthy family that lost it all.  He was a creative, innovative and wealthy man by his own right, but when it all went south, he went to the desert.  He was 17 when he headed off to the 1898 Gold Rush to make his fortune, he met Teddy Rosevelt there who later made him the Postmaster General in the Pasadena, California area, he made a fortune on oranges and lost, not just the fruit, but all his trees to the freeze of 1913, his mother was a Cabot of the Cabot Lodge fame, and his life was rich and full.

This home is an homage to the Pueblo Indian life style and beliefs and is made from anything he could scavenge from the desert.  It had thick walls and dirt floors, and air flow system that kept it a cool 80 degrees, even in the dead of the summer.  He rediscovered the Agua Caliente by digging down 60 feet, after tireing of hauling water by burro for 14 miles most every day.

I love this kind of “eccentricity” and I loved this house.  It is now the Cabot’s Pueblo Museum in Desert Hot Springs.