Sitting in lush farming land, replete with manicured golf courses, condominiums and millionaires, PALM SPRINGS does not conform to any typical image of the desert, embodying a strange mix of Spanish Colonial and mid-century modern styling. The massive bulk of Mount San Jacinto looms over its low-slung buildings, casting a welcome shadow over the town in the late afternoon. Ever since Hollywood stars first came here in the 1930s, laying claim to ranch-style estates and holing up in elite hotels, the clean dry air and sunshine, just 120 miles east of LA, have made Palm Springs irresistible. For years, high-school kids arrived in their thousands for the drunken revelry of Spring Break, until civic zeal ran them out of town, while others come specifically to sober up: the Betty Ford Center in nearby Rancho Mirage draws a star-studded patient list to its booze- and drug-free environment, attempting to undo a lifetime's worth of behavioral disorders in an $11,000 28-day stay. The town is also regarded as the country's largest gay resort.

Palm Springs wasn't always like this. Once it was the domain of the Cahuillan Indians ; they were allocated this land in the 1890s, but exact zoning wasn't settled until the 1940s, by which time the development of hotels and leisure complexes was well under way. Under an odd checkerboard system, every other square mile of Palm Springs forms part of the Agua Caliente (Spanish for "hot water") Indian Reservation , and high rents have made this the second richest tribe in America, worth more than $2 billion - wealth that's been increasing with the new Casino Morongo, right in the heart of town.