Coachella Valley

You never know what surprises you'll find at a farmers market. On Wednesdays in Santa Monica, the fruit of the moment is the mango. "Wow! ... Are these really grown in California?" shoppers ask Bertha Wong as they crowd around her gorgeous Keitt mangoes. Most people think of mangoes as growing in tropical lands such as India and Thailand, but given enough water, mango trees flourish in the dry, scorching Coachella Valley.

MUSIC It's Coachella season and all of your friends are packing up their liquor cabinets and finest beach towels to head for Indio where the country's premiere rock music festival is taking place for not one, but two full weekends. Headliners include Radiohead, the Black Keys, and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Empire Polo Club, 81-800 Ave. 51, Indio, CA. Fri.-Sun. (323) 930-5700; http://www.coachella.com.

Slot canyons, distinctly colored rock formations, palm oases and ridge tops with far-reaching views are the reasons for a hiking pilgrimage to the Mecca Hills. The hills, southeast of Palm Springs near the northern tip of the Salton Sea, offer textbook displays on geologic faults and the power of earthquakes. Rock dating back 600 million years has been pushed up and overturned.

Environmental regulators will be allowed to enforce air quality laws on the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians reservation in the Coachella Valley, an agreement reached seven months after noxious odors from a recycling facility sickened nearby schoolchildren. Under the agreement announced Wednesday, inspectors from the South Coast Air Quality Management District will have the authority to enter sovereign tribal land to monitor environmental laws on a reservation industrial park and issue violations.

I have been a Realtor/broker in the Coachella Valley going on nine years. While I do respect the comments made by Bruce Blomgren ["Vacation Home Sales Sliding," Feb. 11], business in real estate continues to grow. Certain segments of housing such as Mr. Blomgren sells could indeed be down, as his niche is the upscale housing market. Housing in the medium price range is building by leaps and bounds. This is no longer a vacation-home area, in my opinion. People are moving in permanently and living in the valley year-round.

The first white man born in Palm Springs still lives there. Ted McKinney, age 67, is amazed at what has become of the small Indian village. His favorite era? The 1930s, when Hollywood celebrities began using Palm Springs as a playground. "There were so few people here that the movie stars really stood out," he remembers. The Agua Caliente Indians were the first settlers in the Coachella Valley, drawn to its hot springs more than 400 years ago.

Authorities allowed about 2,000 residents and workers to return to their homes and jobs Thursday after air and ground samples taken in the vicinity of a smoldering pesticide warehouse fire showed no contamination and after complaints from grape growers about potential economic losses. Only an area within a one-mile radius of the fire--mainly barren fields--remained sealed.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- Sandwiched between the powerful San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, the Coachella Valley could be the epicenter of the most devastating earthquake in the country, one that is already 300 years overdue, a government scientist warned Thursday. "There will be several thousand dead and billions of dollars in damage," said Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey and a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission.

When the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert was sinking into debt a few years ago, the City Council debated whether to approve a financial donation for it. During the meeting, the mayor asked for public comments, and a tall, graying figure rose from the audience. It was former President Gerald R. Ford. In an impromptu speech, the 38th president of the United States told the crowd that the theater was a jewel for the region to enjoy and preserve. The council's response: a $5-million grant.

When you visit Indio and the Coachella Valley, there are several points of interest. The Coachella Valley Museum & Cultural Center, 82-616 Miles Ave. (at Deglet Noor Street), Indio, (619) 342-6651. Open Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sundays noon to 4 p.m. Admission: $1 adults, 50 cents for children 11 and younger and seniors 60 and older. The museum is housed in a 1926 adobe home that had only two owners: a doctor and a dentist.

Unbeaten Coachella Valley boxer Timothy Bradley signed a new promotional contract Thursday and was assigned a prominent semi-main event fight, probably against former champion Joel Casamayor , under the Nov. 12 Manny Pacquiao - Juan Manuel Marquez pay-per-view bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Bradley (27-0, 11 knockouts) hasn't fought since January while splitting with former promoters Gary Shaw and Ken Thompson , who have sued the fighter. Bradley hasn't settled with Shaw and Thompson, the boxer's manager, Cameron Dunkin , said, but he has been advised he can sign with veteran fight promoter Bob Arum's Top Rank company.

Reporting from Indio -- Nearly every winter sunrise for decades, hot air balloons floated above the Coachella Valley. People on the ground would wave and admire the chromatic airships, while the passengers would gaze down at the date palm groves, the sere desert floor, the plum shadows on the San Jacintos. Then the Marrellis came to town. They bought an 80-acre parcel in 1999, double-fenced it and planted it with thousands of olive trees. When the trees were grown and provided a screen, they started building a compound in the style of a "Moorish fortress castle": two sprawling buildings and a bell tower, surrounded by 24-foot-high walls — four feet thick — with turrets on each corner and a deep moat at the entrance.

The burning stench first enveloped Saul Martinez Elementary School in December, sending two teachers to the hospital and forcing a classroom lockdown as firefighters searched the grounds for the source of the noxious odor. Liria Vargas was in tears, unable to get to her 8-year-old daughter — and herself nauseated from what she thought was an invisible cloud of poisonous gas. The mysterious odor came and went for months and, every time, her four young children complained of piercing headaches, upset stomachs and raw throats.

Farmers markets that close seasonally typically do so in the winter, when fresh produce is least abundant in most of California, but the Palm Springs farmers market shuts down from June to September, in deference to the brutal desert summers, when temperatures can easily surpass 120 degrees. In winter and early spring, by contrast, the generally balmy weather attracts a profusion of tourists and snowbirds, and the desert (mostly the less developed areas of the southern Coachella Valley and Imperial County)

For years, Donna Lozano badgered the Desert Hot Springs Police, public officials and anyone else who would listen, trying to get information about her son's killer. Henry Lozano, a popular 20-year-old ex-Marine, had been shot dead by a suspected gang member in December 2001 while driving near his home. He was dating the man's former girlfriend and had received threats to stay away. "I wanted answers. The police never called. The officer in charge of the case had never done a murder investigation," said Lozano, 65. "I said my son is dead, and I have no information."

Re "Hope withers on the vine," Column One, June 23 The fruits sprouting in the Coachella Valley do so at a severe cost to California. The backbone of the state's giant agricultural industry are the underpaid and overworked farmworkers who bring fresh foods from our fields to our plates every day. It's time that Californians realize that our current agricultural system is unsustainable when farmworkers are paid low wages for grueling, dangerous...

Two beleaguered Coachella Valley transit agencies placed two top executives on paid administrative leave Wednesday amid accusations that the agencies have misspent public funds and falsified documents. The board of directors for the SunLine Transit Agency and the related SunLine Services Group voted in closed session Wednesday evening to take the action against General Manager and Chief Executive Richard Cromwell III and financial officer Bill Maier.

In proposing desert nature reserves, we should think of small ones as well as large ones. Small reserves to protect a particular landmark or other natural feature can be very satisfying. But large ones are most to be sought, for desert connotes vastness, great sweeps of land untouched by the often grimy hand of man, who is given to taking over the land and cluttering it with his "developments" of roads, subdivisions, etc. --E.

An hour before dawn in the camp of last resort. Dozens of men and a few women are asleep in the beds of pickup trucks, in the back seats of cars or on flattened cardboard boxes in the dirt behind the Toro Loco market. The air is cool, but the terrible sun is close at hand. Martin Zavala is wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a Scooby-Doo pillow, a pack of Marlboros under his neck. Thieves prowl at night and will snatch what is not secured.

Authorities say a San Diego County woman died in the desert after wandering away from her car when it got stuck in the sand. Riverside County sheriff's officials said Monday that the body of Genevieve Miller MacMahon, 85, was found over the weekend in the desert near Thousand Palms. MacMahon, of Escondido, had been visiting relatives in the Coachella Valley and apparently got stuck on her way home. Authorities say she called a friend Saturday night and left a message that she was lost.