United States · California
Where to Stay in Palm Desert, California
Palm Desert is a Coachella Valley city in Riverside County, incorporated in 1973 below the San Jacinto Mountains, 14 miles east of Palm Springs.
Find your area →
Where to stay in Palm Desert
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Resorts set the pattern here. Palm Desert grew as a place people came to for golf, shops and spas, so most of its rooms sit in low-rise resort ground on the Coachella Valley floor rather than in anything resembling an old town centre. Mission Hills Country Club is the anchor of that stock.
Frank Sinatra Drive runs through the same quarter. Staying there keeps the courses, the shops and the San Jacinto Mountains view within a few minutes, and it is the choice most visitors make without thinking hard about it. The desert offers a second logic.
Rooms toward the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens and the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center put the Colorado Desert itself first, which suits anyone here to walk rather than to play. Palm Desert stands 14 miles east of Palm Springs. Indio sits the other way along the valley, and a stay in either changes the drive far more than it changes the character of the day. You want the courses for a golf week, the desert edge for the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, and Frank Sinatra Drive for shops within walking reach.
Whichever you pick, the drives are short.
About Palm Desert
Golf and desert, in that order.
What is Palm Desert known for?
Mission Hills Country Club stands among the courses that made the Coachella Valley a resort region for Southern California, and the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens turns the surrounding Colorado Desert into an exhibit. One address on Frank Sinatra Drive is on the register too. Shops, spas and hotels fill much of the ground between the courses.
The mountains close the view.
What are the main landmarks in Palm Desert?
The register mixes leisure with desert. The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens keeps the plants and animals of the Colorado Desert, and the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center explains the range that rises behind the city. St. Margaret's Episcopal Church stands among them.
Mission Hills Country Club and the Miles C. Bates House sit at opposite scales, one a club spread over fairways and one a single dwelling.
What is the history of Palm Desert?
As cities go, this one is new. Palm Desert took its own government in 1973, late for a California city, and the ground it covers had been desert floor in the Coachella Valley for far longer than it has been streets. Growth followed quickly.
From 1980 onward the valley filled in around the golf courses, and Palm Desert became one of the more rapidly expanding cities in California. St. Margaret's Episcopal Church and the Miles C. Bates House both survive from the building years. Leisure did the rest.
Mission Hills Country Club and the courses around it drew visitors from across Southern California, and the shops, spas and hotels that followed turned the place into a resort economy rather than a quiet desert address. The desert kept its claim on the edges. The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens and the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center were built around the Colorado Desert and the range above it, so the older landscape stayed legible even as the fairways spread across the Coachella Valley.
Palm Springs lies 14 miles west along the same valley, with Indio at the other end. Los Angeles is 122 miles off.
Where is Palm Desert?
The valley floor does the framing. Palm Desert lies in the Coachella Valley of Riverside County, inside the Colorado Desert arm of the Sonoran Desert, with the San Jacinto Mountains rising at its back and Indio further along the valley. Palm Springs is 14 miles west.
San Diego lies 121 miles off, Los Angeles 122.
What is the climate of Palm Desert?
The desert governs everything. Palm Desert sits in the Colorado Desert arm of the Sonoran Desert, in the subtropical band of the northern hemisphere, with the San Jacinto Mountains standing between the Coachella Valley and the coast. Shade and water are the local measure, which is why the golf courses, the spas and the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens all read as answers to one problem.
Palm Springs shares the same valley air.
How do you get to Palm Desert?
Most people drive in. Los Angeles is 122 miles away and San Diego 121, which makes Palm Desert a half-day run from either, and Palm Springs sits just 14 miles along the valley to the west. Indio holds the other end.
The Coachella Valley strings its towns along one line, so arriving means joining that line at some point.
Good for
More cities in California
Updated August 2026