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A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
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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 Palm Desert Country (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 Palm Desert Country. 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 northeast corner of their home county. During their lives, most doctors were in the next county to the east. 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 east 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.

Palm Desert Country is located in Riverside County.

To see how the shape of California's counties may 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 Palm Desert Country. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Palm Desert Country:

  • Riverside County     (The home county of Palm Desert Country)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Palm Desert Country, with the one closest to Palm Desert Country listed first.
    • Bermuda Dunes
      (Less than 2 miles to the east)
    • Indian Wells
      (Less than 2 miles to the southwest)
    • Palm Desert
      (3 miles [4.8 km] to the west)
    • La Quinta
      (4 miles [6.4 km] to the south)
    • Indio
      (5 miles [8 km] to the east)
      • Indio is located in Riverside County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Indio
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 91,919 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Indio <1>
    • Rancho Mirage
      (5 miles [8 km] to the west)
    • Thousand Palms
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the northwest)
    • Rimlon
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
      • Rimlon is located in Riverside County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Rimlon
    • Coachella
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the southeast)
    • Cathedral City
      (9 miles [14.5 km] to the west)
    • Sandy Korner
      (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
      • Sandy Korner is located in Riverside County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Sandy Korner
    • Sky Valley
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the north)
    • Alpine Village
      (12 miles [19.3 km] to the southwest)
      • Alpine Village is located in Riverside County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Alpine Village
  • Imperial County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Palm Desert Country, with the one closest to Palm Desert Country listed first.
    • Coolidge Springs
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southeast)
      • Coolidge Springs is located in Imperial County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Coolidge Springs
    • Desert Shores
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southeast)
      • Desert Shores is located in Imperial County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Desert Shores
    • Salton Sea Beach
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the southeast)
      • Salton Sea Beach is located in Imperial County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Salton Sea Beach
  • San Bernardino County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Palm Desert Country, with the one closest to Palm Desert Country listed first.
    • Yucca Valley
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Morongo Valley
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the northwest)
    • Joshua Tree
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
    • Panorama Heights
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
      • Panorama Heights is located in San Bernardino County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Panorama Heights
    • Pioneertown
      (30 miles [48.3 km] to the north)

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

Cemeteries Near Palm Desert Country ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Palm Desert Country.

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.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Palm Desert Country - one of the links might be able to help.

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

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Palm Desert Country, with the one closest to Palm Desert Country listed first.

  • Coachella Valley Public Cemetery
    (7 miles [11.3 km] to the southeast)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Coachella Valley Public Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Coachella Valley Public Cemetery is a very large cemetery that is located in Coachella.
    • The Coachella Valley Public Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Coachella Valley Cemetery
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #7914 <2>
  • Desert Memorial Park
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
  • Palm Springs District Cemetery
    (9 miles [14.5 km] to the northwest)
  • Toro Cemetery
    (11 miles [17.7 km] to the southeast)
  • Jane Augustine Patencio Cemetery
    (13 miles [20.9 km] to the northwest)
  • Torres Martinez Reservation Cemetery
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Martinez Cemetery
    (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Mountain Valley Memorial Park
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
  • Cahuilla Indian Reservation Cemetery
    (28 miles [45.1 km] to the southwest)

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.<4>

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

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

Newspapers Published in Palm Desert Country ...

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 74 newspapers that have been published in the area around Palm Desert Country.

Although we're unaware of any newspapers that were published in the immediate area of Palm Desert Country, there are papers which were published within 30 miles [48.3 km]<3>. A list of those papers, sorted by paper name, can be found on the Extended Newspaper List for Palm Desert Country.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first turn to the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These professional and volunteer 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 Palm Desert Country:

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 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.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' distance. A straight line distance ignores obstructions like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line from Point A (ie- Palm Desert Country) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<4>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 Palm Desert Country, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.