Desert Hot Springs, CA

The hot water beneath Desert Hot Springs is not the same supply that comes from household taps. Spa resorts draw geothermal mineral water from their own wells in the Desert Hot Springs Subbasin, where deeply circulating groundwater is heated and rises through fractured rock. Mission Springs Water District draws the public drinking-water supply from other subbasins and does not use the highly mineralized hot-water basin for potable service. That geology helped distinguish a city set in the Colorado Desert on the north side of the Coachella Valley, between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountain ranges. By July 2025, the federal population estimate had reached 34,009, 4.6 percent above the April 2020 estimates base. Cabot Yerxa's 1914 discovery of nearby hot and cold springs became an early settlement point; the Pueblo Revival buildings he constructed from 1941 to 1944 now form Cabot's Pueblo Museum, which continued offering audio tours in 2026.

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Current civic life extends beyond the spa district. A 15,500-square-foot Riverside County library opened on Palm Drive in June 2021 with study rooms, a community room, flexible program rooms, separate teen and children's areas, computers, and roughly 31,000 items. Its current calendar mixes Spanish storytime and Loteria with STEAM sessions, teen gaming, yoga, digital help, and summer lunches for children. The city's 2025-26 event listings also placed concerts, DJ nights, food, and local vendors together at Desert Nights on the BLVD. Everyday movement was also a subject of public planning in 2025-26, when an active-transportation update sought better-connected routes with fewer traffic conflicts for walking, bicycling, skating, and scooting through surveys, workshops, and neighborhood meetings.