La Quinta Resort & Club

La Quinta Resort & Club is the original desert hideaway of Greater Palm Springs, tucked against the Santa Rosa Mountains in the city of La Quinta, California. For nearly a century it’s drawn Hollywood creatives, golf legends, and sun‑seekers to its whitewashed casitas, palm‑lined courtyards, and sparkling pools.

Entrepreneur Walter H. Morgan opened the property as La Quinta Hotel on December 29, 1926, after buying what was then remote desert farmland. His idea was simple: a quiet, luxurious retreat about 125 miles from Los Angeles, built in a Spanish Colonial Revival style with adobe‑style casitas, red‑tile roofs, and intimate courtyards. In the same year, the hotel opened the Coachella Valley’s first golf course, turning this corner of the desert into a true golf destination.

Word spread quickly through Hollywood. By the late 1920s and ’30s, stars like Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, and Ginger Rogers were slipping away to La Quinta to escape studio life. Director Frank Capra turned the resort into his writing base, penning classics such as It Happened One Night and Lost Horizon here and later keeping a home on the grounds.

Through the mid‑century, new owners expanded both the hotel and its golf footprint. La Quinta Country Club and, later, the Pete Dye–designed Mountain and Dunes courses cemented the area’s reputation as a golf capital. Today, La Quinta Resort guests have access to 90 holes of championship golf across La Quinta Resort and PGA WEST, with nearby courses hosting the PGA TOUR’s The American Express each year.

When the surrounding community officially incorporated as a city on May 1, 1982, it chose the name “La Quinta” in honor of the resort that put it on the map. That makes La Quinta one of the only cities in the United States actually named after a resort hotel, often mentioned alongside Beverly Hills in that very short list. It also has no connection to the La Quinta roadside hotel chain—the name here belongs first to the historic resort and to the desert city that grew up around it.

Today, La Quinta Resort & Club covers roughly 45 acres of gardens, citrus trees, and meandering paths at the base of the mountains. The property includes 718 accommodations—mostly low‑rise casitas plus one‑, two‑, and three‑bedroom villas—many with fireplaces, private patios, outdoor showers, fire pits, and even private plunge pools.

What guests experience today:

• Pools & spa: More than forty climate‑controlled pools, hot tubs, and an expansive Spa La Quinta offering desert‑inspired treatments, fitness, and yoga.

• Golf: Access to multiple championship courses at La Quinta Resort and PGA WEST, including iconic Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus designs.

• Tennis & pickleball: A storied racquet club that once hosted the early years of what is now the BNP Paribas Open, plus modern tennis and pickleball facilities that regularly rank among the top resort programs in the country.

• Dining: From the fine‑dining steakhouse Morgan’s in the desert to Adobe Grill’s regional Mexican cuisine, Restaurant Twenty6, and more casual spots, the resort functions as a small culinary village.

• Events & meetings: Over 190,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space, from historic ballrooms to lawns framed by the Santa Rosa Mountains.

• Pet‑friendly casitas: Dog‑friendly rooms and casitas with walled patios and acres of open space, making it an easy escape for travelers with pets.

La Quinta’s Hollywood connection never really left. The resort continues to appear in film and television and recently served as the production hub for national reality‑TV specials. Ahead of its 100th anniversary in 2026, La Quinta completed a property‑wide restoration that refreshed casitas, villas, the lobby, and pool areas while carefully preserving the resort’s original Spanish Colonial Revival look.

For visitors today, La Quinta Resort & Club is more than a place to stay—it’s the historic heart of a desert city, where nearly a century of architecture, golf, Hollywood lore, and Coachella Valley lifestyle all meet in one walkable, sun‑soaked oasis.