-Second in a Series-
By Donald H. Harrison
BORREGO SPRINGS, California — Today if one stares at the ridge line of the mountain behind the Palms at Indian Head, one can make out nature’s sculpture of an Indian who evidently was lying on his back and contemplating the bright stars in this desert town’s famously dark sky.
Back in its heyday, when the Palms was known as Hoberg’s Desert Resort, some people stared at other kinds of stars as well — movie stars. The hotel has a collection of photos of some of the movie greats who, according to research and eye-witness accounts, flew into a nearby private airport and quietly and without fanfare took rooms close to the hotel’s Olympic-size swimming pool.
Given the popularity of the new television series, Smash, dealing with the making of a musical about Marilyn Monroe, we can start with that legendary actress. According to the Palms owner and executive director, David Leibert, Monroe was among many Hollywood celebrities who came to the hotel knowing that in the desert they could have some semblance of privacy, away from the exploding flash bulbs of the paparazzi.
Others celebrities enjoying the quiet and ever-present sun here included James Arness, Marlon Brando, Raymond Burr, Leo Carrillo, Lon Chaney, Bing Crosby, and Clark Gable, according to Leibert’s research. A regular visitor to the hotel was Frank Morgan, one-time honorary mayor of Borrego Springs, who movie buffs may remember played the Wizard in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland.
How did these stars even know about the place? According to Leibert, the Hoberg family operated a successful resort in the Lake County hamlet of Cobb Mountain, California, which drew a summer crowd, including Gable. Besides movie stars, guests included California governor (and later U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice) Earl Warren, as well as botanist Luther Burbank.
In winter, however, the weather in Lake County was generally too cold for most guests, so the family created Hoberg’s Desert Resort in Borrego Springs. The staff, in the style of snow birds, moved from one location to the other as the seasons changed. The gamble paid off; Hoberg’s was able to attract well-known guests at one facility or the other.
Leibert has been collecting old news clippings and has been interviewing long-time residents of this town in the northeastern corner of San Diego County in order to document the history of the property that he and partner Cindy Wood decided to make their life’s work some 20 years ago.
Slowly, painstakingly, they have been engaged in an attempt to bring the property to its former glory. Currently there are 12 rooms — 10 overlooking the pool from the second story of the hotel and 2 others down by the pool itself. That’s quite a reduction from the 56 units that were present in the Hoberg heyday.
According to Leibert, when one of the Hoberg brothers died, his widow and surviving brothers agreed that she would take the Borrego Springs property and they would take her share of the Lake County property. However, the Borrego Springs property was not sustained, and eventually it was sold.
With different owners came different uses. At one point it was a nudist colony, at another it was a detention facility for boys. At yet another point in time, a woman sought unsuccessfully to convert the property into condominiums. Then a banker bought the property, figuring he’d making something of it, but never was able to do so. Eventually, Leibert, who had been with Park West Realty in San Diego, teamed up with Wood and purchased the property. Leibert is an amateur astronomer and had been attracted to Borrego Springs because it is comparatively free of light pollution, thus making the heavens more readily discernable
(Meanwhile, the Hoberg property in Lake County also went through some changes, including usage by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a well-known practitioner of transcendental meditation and guru to the Beatles, particularly George Harrison. After the maharishi’s death in 2008, the property was sold to a development group which has announced plans to make it once again a resort.)
Besides guest quarters, gleaming swimming pool, and stately palm trees through which the desert winds sometimes whistle around sunset, the Palms at Indian Head has two restaurants — the Red Ocotillo, for casual dining, and the Coyote Steak House for finer dining. Borrego Springs has a reputation for being a place where “midnight comes at 9 o’clock” but not at the bar, restaurant and terrace overlooking the Palms’ swimming pool. My wife Nancy and I stayed at the hotel over the Feb. 24-26 weekend, and we can attest that the place was crowded and happy.
Leibert said originally he and Wood opened the Red Ocotillo in the business district of Borrego Springs, but subsequently decided to move it to their hotel rather than to pay rent for quarters that did not meet their needs. The hotel also operates its own small art gallery with the works of local artists for sale.
Among the plans that Leibert hopes he’ll eventually be able to put in place is an underground lounge behind the deep end of the swimming pool. There already are two windows from that space permitting a view of the swimmers in the pool, and Leibert has visions of installing an intimate cocktail bar there.
Maybe, he said, he’ll name the lounge “The Deep End.”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com