Desert Magazine: How a Publication Taught Readers to See the Desert
Launched in El Centro in 1937 and moved to Palm Desert in 1948, the magazine brought a region into focus through reporting, photography, maps and art.
A desert can look empty from a moving car. Stop, learn a plant’s name, follow a wash or ask who lived along an old road, and the same landscape becomes crowded with meaning.
Desert Magazine made that change in attention its business. Its first issue, dated November 1937, appeared in El Centro under co-publishers Randall Henderson and J. Wilson McKenney. In 1948, the operation moved to Palm Desert, where its printing plant, bookshop and gallery became part of the new community’s identity.
The magazine is worth remembering for more than its covers or its connection to a historic building. It helped readers find subjects in places they might otherwise have passed through. Its enduring achievement was to make curiosity practical.
- 1937: the first issue establishes a publication for desert residents and interested readers farther away.
- Many contributors: writers, photographers, artists and business staff sustained the magazine alongside Henderson.
- 1948: the operation relocates to Palm Desert; the formal public opening follows in October.
- A living connection: its pages remain useful historical evidence, while its old directions and assumptions need a critical reading.
A change in attention
Henderson’s opening editorial, There Are Two Deserts, set out a contrast between a hostile-looking wasteland and a place whose character emerged through familiarity. The publication’s promise was to help readers get beyond a quick impression.
That is still a useful distinction. A photograph can make a landscape attractive without making it understandable. A place name can be familiar without explaining what happened there. The magazine combined several ways of looking so that a reader could move from recognition toward knowledge.
The Historical Society of Palm Desert remembers Henderson in precisely this role: an editor whose knowledge of desert and mountain environments challenged the assumption that arid country had little to offer.
A regional idea, launched in El Centro
Desert Magazine began in an existing network of newspaper work, printing, field trips and friendships. It did not spring fully formed from a lone editor’s inspiration.
The publication’s own 1948 account traces its development through Henderson and McKenney’s newspaper association and a commercial printing business. Printing jobs helped support a magazine that took time to find its financial footing. The creative idea needed machinery, paper, distribution and people willing to keep working.
Its intended region also exceeded the Coachella Valley. The Sharlot Hall Museum describes a publication concerned with the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, covering travel, natural history, visual art, literature, mining and human-interest stories. Local roots did not mean a narrow horizon.
This mixture is part of its appeal today. A reader could arrive for scenery and leave with an interest in geology; open a travel piece and encounter a working life; study an illustration and want to learn the name of the plant beside the road.
What words, pictures and maps each supplied
The magazine’s forms complemented one another. A photograph established a visual impression. A writer supplied sequence, character and explanation. A map connected the account to geography. An illustration could isolate a feature or suggest a mood that a page of directions could not.
Together, those forms reduced the distance between reading about a place and being able to imagine it. The reader had something to look for, a question to carry and a reason to pay attention.
The strongest result was not necessarily a trip. A person who never reached a remote mountain could still acquire a more varied understanding of the region. Someone who did travel could arrive with an idea of what made the place worth noticing.
That is why old regional publishing can remain useful after its advertisements and road directions expire. It preserves the subjects people considered significant, the language they used and the connections they drew.
Put selected stories on the map
The examples below connect the publication’s business history with several kinds of field reporting. The later Pioneertown example also shows why the magazine matters as a record of places changing over time.
The people who kept it going
Henderson’s name deserves its prominence. It should not make the other work disappear.
In its November 1948 retrospective, the magazine credits Bess Stacy with business management during his military service, Lucile Harris, later Lucile Weight, with editorial responsibility, and Evonne Henderson Riddell with circulation. These were the jobs that connected manuscripts with printed issues and printed issues with readers.
Field contributors mattered just as much. Different writers brought different interests and temperaments. A magazine built around one person’s taste still depended on many people noticing something worth sending in.
The 1948 account says most contributions came from freelance writers and photographers, and describes editors corresponding with promising contributors to improve their work. That is a useful glimpse of publishing as a process: observation became a submission, then revision, then a page that other people could use.
A publishing home in Palm Desert
The move in 1948 made the relationship between publishing and place unusually visible. The new building at 74-225 Highway 111 brought printing and editorial work together with public-facing cultural spaces.
The dates need a little care. The August issue already used a Palm Desert address and directed future mail there. The October issue described staff working in the new building and invited visitors to a formal opening on October 16 and 17. Relocation and public opening were related milestones, rather than competing dates.
The invitation offered a gallery, bookshop, printing and mailing services. Readers could come through the door and encounter the operation that made their magazine. Books and art gave the building a public life beyond the arrival and departure of paper.
The Palm Springs Preservation Foundation attributes the Pueblo Revival building to Harry J. Williams. The Historical Society of Palm Desert identifies it as an early commercial and cultural anchor of the developing community.
For the wider relationship between Randall’s publishing project, Cliff Henderson’s development and Shadow Mountain Club, continue with Why Palm Desert Exists.
Explore all four current photographs and the building’s history on our Desert Magazine Building location page.
The illustrated timeline
Paying for pages people trusted
The magazine’s 1948 retrospective also offers a revealing business detail: its reported circulation income for 1947 substantially exceeded its advertising income. The publisher presented reader support as a reason it could retain an independent editorial viewpoint.
That was the publication describing its own model, not an outside audit. Even so, the distinction matters. If people paid because they valued the pages, the editor had a direct incentive to give them material worth returning for.
Commercial printing, retail activity and advertising also belonged to the operation. Cultural ambition and a functioning business were intertwined. The quality of the work depended partly on the ability to keep producing it.
A present-day regional publisher faces a different medium and different economics, but the underlying question is recognizable: what will readers find useful enough to seek out again?
Read the archive with curiosity and judgment
The magazine is a historical source, not an instruction manual for the present. Its routes may have changed, access may be different and a familiar place name may conceal a substantially altered landscape.
Some assumptions deserve an equally careful reading. The first issue’s botanical adventure includes behavior toward plants and archaeological material that should not be copied. California State Parks’ modern elephant-tree interpretation instead emphasizes living plants, fragile soils and adaptation.
Descriptions of Indigenous people also need context. These were living homelands before the magazine arrived, and Indigenous communities continue to tell their own histories. Outsider writing in an old publication should be read alongside those accounts—not treated as the final explanation of a people or place. DOI’s Cahuilla guide is one starting point for the local context.
Keeping those distinctions does not diminish the archive. It makes the reading more useful: we can learn both about the landscape and about the people who described it.
What remains of its way of seeing
The original print publication ended in 1985, after later editors and publishers carried it beyond Henderson’s founding era. Its influence is still visible in the kinds of questions local writers, photographers, historians and conservation groups ask.
Friends of the Desert Mountains continues to invoke Henderson’s opening editorial when explaining its work. That is a direct connection between the magazine’s invitation to notice the desert and present-day efforts to help people understand and care for it.
A walk on the Randall Henderson Loop offers a simple way to continue the conversation. Look at the shape of a wash, the plants occupying different patches of ground and the changes in the mountain backdrop. A familiar view becomes more interesting when it gives you something to investigate.
Palm Desert’s cultural life also continues along El Paseo, in the Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden, around Civic Center Park and at the McCallum Theatre. These are present-day places to explore, rather than sites from the magazine’s first issue.
For Desert Oasis Insider, that is the most useful part of this history. A regional publication can do more than recommend places. It can help readers build a lasting relationship with where they live or travel.
Desert Magazine did not exhaust the stories of the desert. It demonstrated how many stories become visible when somebody takes the time to look.
Questions about Desert Magazine
When and where did Desert Magazine begin?
The first issue was dated November 1937 and published in El Centro, California. Its masthead names Randall Henderson and J. Wilson McKenney as co-publishers, Henderson as editor and McKenney as business manager.
When did the magazine move to Palm Desert?
In 1948. The August issue already directed correspondence to Palm Desert, and the October issue announced the formal opening of the new home on October 16–17.
What did Desert Magazine cover?
Its subjects included regional travel, natural history, photography, art, literature, mining and people. Its geographic interests extended across the Southwest and into northwestern Mexico.
Are the map and photographs reproduced from the magazine?
No. The story map and timeline are original editorial graphics. The building photographs are Mark Miller’s present-day views from October 15, 2026, and the Randall Henderson Loop photograph is his 2024 work. None is an archival image reproduced from Desert Magazine.
Can the old issues be used as current travel guides?
They are best read as historical sources. Roads, access and conditions may have changed, and some attitudes and collecting practices need a critical reading. Use current land-manager information when planning a visit.
Sources, archive notes and image credits
Research reviewed October 14, 2026. Printed page numbers may differ from the page counter in a PDF viewer. Sources distinguish contemporary publication evidence from later institutional histories.
- Desert Magazine, November 1937 — First issue: masthead and contents p. 3; editorial p. 5; selected stories and continuations as linked in the map. The issue was read directly; its images are not republished here.
- Desert Magazine, August 1948 — Masthead p. 3 and address notice p. 23 establish the Palm Desert mailing address before the formal opening.
- Desert Magazine, October 1948 — Public invitation p. 10 gives the October 16–17 opening dates and describes the building’s activities.
- Desert Magazine, November 1948 — Anniversary retrospective, pp. 17–20: origins, staff roles, business model and publishing home. Financial claims are attributed to the publication’s own account.
- Jack Delaney, Pioneertown, Desert Magazine, October 1965 — Pages 18–19, hosted by Pioneertown Sun. A later example of reporting on a changing place.
- Historical Society of Palm Desert — Historic Landmarks — Building address, October 1948 opening and commercial/cultural functions.
- Historical Society of Palm Desert — Founding Figures — Henderson’s editorial role and relocation from El Centro.
- Palm Springs Preservation Foundation — Desert Magazine Building — Harry J. Williams, Pueblo Revival design and the foundation’s preservation account. The page reflects an advocacy perspective.
- Sharlot Hall Museum — Periodical Holdings — Geographic and subject scope, Henderson’s 1937–1958 editorial era and end of the original print publication in 1985.
- Friends of the Desert Mountains — What We Do — A present-day organization explicitly connecting its work to Henderson’s opening editorial.
- California State Parks — Elephant Tree Nature Trail Guide — Modern interpretive context for elephant trees and fragile desert soils.
- Natural Earth — map data — Public-domain state boundaries. Regional marker coordinates draw on the DOI Palm Desert record, USGS-referenced locality listings and the Pioneertown historic-district record. The map is not a route or an exact historical site plan.
Visuals: the story map and timeline icons are original graphics. The featured image and building photograph are Mark Miller’s original photographs from October 15, 2026. No archival cover, article illustration or photograph is reproduced. Linked archive scans are supplied for reading, not as evidence of a licence to reuse their images. The trail photograph is Mark Miller’s original 2024 work.
Map precision: El Centro and Palm Desert are locality markers for publishing centres, not surveyed former office locations. Borrego is represented by the town area, not an individual tree or route. Charleston Peak and Desert Center use published geographic references; Pioneertown uses a historic-district reference. The selected stories do not represent the publication’s entire range.
