It was built by a group of investors called the Palm Springs Spa, Inc., led by its President, developer Samuel Banowit. The Spa was the Tribe’s first long term lease and opened on January 21, 1960. In 1959, a tenacious, all-woman Tribal Council successfully lobbied Congress to allow the Tribe and its members to grant long-term leases, up to 99 years. The late 1950s marked the start of the Agua Caliente Tribe’s push for more control and flexibility in the use of their lands for profit.

Over the next 100 years, the Tribe would lease and sometimes manage the property, as it grew from a dusty spring-fed stream into a gleaming Hollywood hangout. In the late 1880s, the first of three bathhouses was built, drawing visitors from far and wide to soothe their ailments in the natural mineral waters. What they the Tribe didn’t know then was that the healing waters would also prove to be the key to their economic success. However, it was not until a United States government survey in 1853 that the spring took on new meaning - as a place for tourism and profit, based on the healing properties of the waters and the area’s dry desert air. The recent successes and future plans of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians rely on the Tribe’s steadfast belief in something bigger.įor more than 2,000 years, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has viewed the natural hot springs located below the present day hotel at Spa Resort Casino in Palm Springs to be a place of power and healing.

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