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Murray Canyon Trail in Indians Canyons features
a year-round running stream populated by native
fan palms and lots of dramatic rock formations.

A bonus of this trail is beyond its chain-link fence’s end: You’ll Murray Canyon is named for a Palm Springs pio-
see in the hills a scattering of stone houses that truly blend neer, Welwood Murray, a Scotsman who came to the desert
into the terrain. These are the 21 homes built in the 1920s for in 1886 to open a sanitarium called the Palm Springs Hotel
members of the private Andreas Canyon Club. A tribal ranger that featured the curative powers of the sun and dry climate.
told me years ago here that these remarkable homes are The historic downtown library on Palm Canyon Drive is also
never sold, only handed down from generation to generation. named for Murray as is the cemetery he established in 1894
But Murray Canyon has always been my personal next to the desert’s oldest golf course, O’Donnell Golf Club in
favorite. Its trail to the Seven Sisters Waterfall is about 2 miles Palm Springs.
one-way (4 miles round-trip) with about a 500-foot eleva- The Murray Canyon Trail hits its first fan palms after
tion gain. It’s a little less traveled than either Palm or Andreas about a half-mile, and then follows them along the Murray
canyons and offers a lovely fan palm-laden canyon along its Canyon Creek. You’ll see a few morteros near the trail that
year-round creek. speak of villages that once flourished here. And you’ll cross

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