Resorts: Big Chief Many Baths

The spring itself, bubbling up from volcanic depths beneath Southern California's San Jacinto Mountains, has been there for aeons. But in the 60 years since vacationers first discovered Palm Springs, nobody paid much attention to it except the bedraggled Indians who owned it. Visitors reveled in the crystalline desert air, the handsome golf courses, and the magnificent views of the mountains rising out of the desert. Movie stars vacationed there and built luxurious holiday homes. Dwight Eisenhower came out to try the golf. But the Agua Caliente Indians, who found the place and had been granted the acreage immediately surrounding the spring, were left with nothing but holes in their pockets.

For one thing, the Indians were not allowed to lease their lands for more than a five-year period; it was not until 1959 that Congress changed the terms of the grant, allowed 99-year leases. First man to take advantage of this new dispensation was Paleface Sam Banowit, who trekked out from Chicago, took a look at the spring, and committed $1,000,000 to the proposition that the flow of water could be enlarged sufficiently for a public bathhouse. When the drilling yielded enough thermal stuff to float the Spanish Armada, Sam had the water filtered through 20 miles of pipes and stored underground, to be eventually released into outdoor and indoor immersion and swirlpool baths.

Besides the swirlpool baths (also called "Roman Stepdown Tubs"), there are four outside pools, three of them simmering at more than 100°. To their boiling depths come crowds of celebrities, and not only show-business types but also such solid citizens as Steelworkers Chief David McDonald, Golfer Gary Player and Joe DiMaggio. Late last month, Banowit opened the Palm Springs Spa Hotel and Mineral Springs, a $2,500,000 edifice touted simply as "the most beautiful bathhouse in the world."

Fourteen Agua Caliente families now enjoy a handsome income from the rentals paid by the spa. But the tribe sees this as merely a beginning. Following Banowit's lead, developers have been clamoring for other patches of Indian-owned property scattered through the resort. Each of the more than 100 members of the tribe figures his share of the once scruffy acreage is worth at least $335,000.

Sam Banowit is not doing badly, either. In token of gratitude, the Agua Calientes inducted Big Sam Banowit into the tribe. "He's the first Jewish Indian in the country," said one tribesman.