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The Commemorative Quarter for California





Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Cathedral City (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Cathedral City. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors and hospitals were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Cathedral City is located in Riverside County.

To see how the shape of California's counties have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Riverside County: La Paz (AZ), Imperial, Orange, San Bernardino & San Diego.

Below are the counties that are near Cathedral City. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Cathedral City:

  • Riverside County     (The home county of Cathedral City)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Cathedral City, with the one closest to Cathedral City listed first.
    • Thousand Palms
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northeast)
    • Palm Springs
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the northwest)
    • Rancho Mirage
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the southeast)
    • Palm Desert
      (6 miles [9.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Indian Wells
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the southeast)
    • Palm Desert Country
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the east)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Palm Desert Country have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Palm Desert Country
      • Palm Desert Country is located in Riverside County
    • Garnet
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Garnet
      • Garnet is located in Riverside County
    • Bermuda Dunes
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the east)
    • Sky Valley
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northeast)
    • North Palm Springs
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the northwest)
    • La Quinta
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Alpine Village
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the south)
      • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for Alpine Village have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alpine Village
      • Alpine Village is located in Riverside County
  • San Bernardino County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Cathedral City, with the one closest to Cathedral City listed first.
    • Morongo Valley
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the north)
    • Yucca Valley
      (23 miles [37 km] to the north)
    • Joshua Tree
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Pioneertown
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Panorama Heights
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Panorama Heights
      • Panorama Heights is located in San Bernardino County

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Cathedral City, see our County-by-County Page for Cathedral City.

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Cathedral City ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 96 newspapers that have been published in the area around Cathedral City.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Cathedral City. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Cathedral City and those printed in the larger area surrounding Cathedral City.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 29 miles [46.7 km]<3> of Cathedral City.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we like to start with the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These helpful websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Cathedral City:

Cemeteries Near Cathedral City ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Cathedral City.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

If you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our selection of Genealogy Websites (see below).

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Cathedral City covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Cathedral City, with the one closest to Cathedral City listed first.

  • Desert Memorial Park
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northeast)
  • Palm Springs District Cemetery
    (2 miles [3.2 km] to the northeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Palm Springs District Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Palm Springs District Cemetery
  • Coachella Valley Cemetery
    (16 miles [25.7 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Coachella Valley Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Coachella Valley Cemetery
  • Toro Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Toro Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Toro Cemetery
  • Martinez Cemetery
    (23 miles [37 km] to the southeast)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Martinez Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Martinez Cemetery
  • Mountain Valley Memorial Park
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Mountain Valley Memorial Park have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Mountain Valley Memorial Park
  • Sunnyslope Cemetery
    (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Note: The GPS coordinates that we are using for the Sunnyslope Cemetery have been provided by the GNIS.<2> The coordinates still need to be verified.
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for the Sunnyslope Cemetery
  • San Jacinto Valley Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the west)

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<5>

While we didn't find Cathedral City in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Cathedral City.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Cathedral City, with the one closest to Cathedral City listed first.

  • Idyllwild
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
  • Banning
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the northwest)

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Cathedral City. See our List of 1890's Communities around Cathedral City.

The official website for Cathedral City: www.cathedralcity.gov/

The official website for Riverside County: www.co.riverside.ca.us/

The official website for State of California: https://www.ca.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>The location has been supplied by the Geographic Names Information System - which is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While these values should be definitive, we found that accuracy can vary and you should double-check the location if accuracy is required.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'point-to-point' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Cathedral City) to Point B.Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Cathedral City. The point we use is located at these GPS coordinates - Latitude: 33.7804, Longitude: -116.4670    
<4>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<5>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Cathedral City, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.




 

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This page was last modified/updated: 07 Apr 2024