Wellwood Family

Wellwood family in Palm Springs.

The Wellwood family are some of the first white settlers in the Palm Springs area. Native Americans had (more specifically the Cahullia people) had been here for thousands of years before any member of the Wellwood family was here.

It was George Wellwood Murray's father who came here in 1886, one of three people to live and build in the desert city after the installation of the railroad reached the desert from the coast.

Sometime near the turn of the century, Murray built the first hotel in the city -- The Palm Springs Hotel -- across from what is now the Spa Casino, which used to be bathhouse with a natural spring.

The library at the downtown crossroads of Tahquitz Canyon and Palm Canyon is named after Murray. It's currently closed and has been for years. I can remember going inside years ago. It was a pleasant place where locals hung out reading the newspaper and/or browsing for books to check out. I can remember that there used to be book sale every so often, which I has often frequented, browsing for a good buy.

According to the Palm Springs city website, the library will be open in the future, though no one knows when. Now it's just another of the dozen or so empty buildings in the downtown area.

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