The area was first known as the 'Old MacDonald Ranch', then 'Palm Village' in the 1920s when date palms were planted. Local historians said the main residents of pre-1950 Palm Desert are Cahuilla Indian farmers of the now extinct San Cayetano tribe, but a few members of the Montoya family of Cahuilla/Spanish descent are prominent leaders in civic life. The first residential development occurred in 1943 in connection with an United States ArmyArmy maintenance camp in the area. That site was later developed into "El Paseo," an upscale shopping district not unlike Rodeo Drive. In 1948, the Palm Desert Corporation began to develop real estate, and in 1951 the area was given its present name. Many celebrities keep homes in Palm Desert, including Rita Rudner and more recently, the current home of teenage pro golfer Michelle Wie and one of the homes of Bill Gates. The community was incorporated November 26, 1973 when it only had 1,500 permanent residents in a master-planned community covered with desert, from Palm Springs to Indio at the time. Palm Desert once served as a training ground for George S. PattonGeneral George Patton's U.S. Third ArmyThird Army troops and tank battalions. After world war II, Clifford Henderson, a L.A.-based developer made the sold land into his dreamed community in 1946, but that name was changed to "Palm Desert" in 1950. The first golf course/tennis club was Shadow Mountain in 1952, followed by Marrakesh in 1954, the Palm Desert Greens mobile home park golf course in 1961 and the Palm Desert Country Club in 1962 located five miles east, was formally annexed by the city in 1992, is once again a trendy gem of the "world's golf capital". In the late 1970's and 1980's, a spree of golf clubs and hotels appeared in the northern half of Palm Desert, such as the four-star Marriott's Desert Springs Golf Resort and Spa in 1981 and the four-star Hilton Desert Willow Golf Resort in 2002. The city developed a major shopping area when the Palm Desert Town Center (now the Westfield Shoppingtown-Palm Desert) opened in 1983, followed by the arrival of Target in Desert Crossing in 1995 and a new Wal-Mart supercenter in Desert Gateway in 2006. The rapid growth and several annexations in the 1980's and 1990's has made Palm Desert to become a major shopping destination and the main center of business activity in the Coachella Valley, although Indio is the most populous city at 75,000 in 2005, is the home of the majority of Palm Desert's employees who come to work daily or seasonally. Local residents, both oldtimers and newcomers shown great concern on protecting the desert environment, promote natural landscaping or artistic sculptures, the expansion of Fred Waring Drive into a four-lane major traffic fare, and to slow down suburban sprawl but encouraged new retail centers and commercial zones, that nearly engulfed the Coachella Valley from California State Highway 111 and Interstate 10. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Desert%2C_California