A sick child, a concerned father seeking a healthy climate and a knowledgeable Native American kickstarted the development of Palm Springs.
Because his son Johnny suffered from tuberculosis, Judge John Guthrie McCallum had already abandoned a successful career and moved to San Bernardino, seeking a more salubrious climate. There, he was told by Will Pablo, his Cahuilla friend/interpreter, about an even warmer, dryer climate—and the healing properties of the hot springs called Agua Caliente.
Together, the two men left the old Mormon town of San Bernardino, and upon arriving at the oasis, McCallum knew immediately that this “Palm Valley,” as he called it, was for him. It was 1884, and the McCallums became the first permanent non-Native American residents of Palm Springs.
The son of a Scottish farmer, McCallum was born in Indiana in 1826, and by 1854, he had a thriving law practice there. It was interrupted, however, by a letter from California; one of his two brothers who went there to seek their fortunes had been stricken in an epidemic. At his mother’s pleadings, he closed out his law practice and went around Cape Horn to California to find his brothers. When he arrived in San Francisco, he found that both had died.
California agreed with McCallum, and he remained, settling in Placerville, where he became a lawyer known for settling mining disputes. He bought the Georgetown Weekly News, a prominent voice of the American “Know Nothing” Party; became a state senator; and eventually became president of the American Party. After the meteoric rise and fall of the Know Nothings, McCallum returned to private practice.
While he was never a “judge,” the title was bestowed upon him by colleagues and friends. He was admitted to practice law before the California Supreme Court and, later, the U.S. Supreme Court.
McCallum was an advocate of a railroad to the Pacific, a plank on Abraham Lincoln’s presidential platform. He switched parties and was elected president of the State Republican Committee, becoming an elector. He went to Washington, D.C., to deliver the vote for Lincoln in 1865 and attended the president’s second inauguration. He was present during the assassination and was part of a delegation that paid final respects over Lincoln’s bier.
In San Francisco, McCallum had met and married Emily Freeman in 1861; they had four sons and two daughters. (One son died in infancy.) John Guthrie Jr. was born on Dec. 22, 1864, and, as the oldest, was the favored child. The four older children were stricken during the 1881 typhoid epidemic, and Johnny was the only one who did not fully recover. He almost died—and was so weakened that his condition lapsed into tuberculosis.
Even though McCallum was at the height of a successful public and private career, he decided to devote his remaining fortune and his future to the restoration of his son’s health. McCallum able to secure an appointment in warmer San Bernardino as Indian agent; the order was signed by President Chester A. Arthur.
However, after that first fortuitous visit to Agua Caliente, he resigned his position and moved his family to the newly renamed Palm City. They took the train to Seven Palms and took off across the desert on a buckboard, with Johnny on a stretcher. Originally settling in a rough camp, McCallum then built a fine adobe house.
Section 14, which contained the hot springs, was set aside by the government for the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, but two speculators, W.E. Van Slyke and M. Byrne, had purchased the adjoining areas from the railroad. They had also formed the Palm City Water Company. On March 24, 1885, McCallum bought from them a one-fifth interest in those bordering sections (13, 15, 23 and 25)—a total of 320 acres—and a one-fifth interest in the water company. Over the next eight years, he continued to buy land from Van Slyke, Byrne and the railroad until he owned more than 6,000 acres.
He hired a surveyor, T.M. Topp, to lay out the town of “Palm City.” The original subdivision was called the Colony Tract and consisted of 76 lots of various sizes totaling 199 acres. He began selling right away, and by 1886 had deeded 11 of the lots and about 35 acres of outside tracts. He set up the area’s first store using one room of a small building, and began stocking of canned foods and other materials needed by the settlers and other travelers.
McCallum set about to accomplish his vision, which included an influx of people. From their small ranches and home sites, they would develop an agricultural settlement where produce could grow all year. With this in mind, he went to Los Angeles and set up a law practice. There, with three partners and a capitalization of $100,000, they syndicated under the name Palm Valley Land and Water Company in 1887. Their first order of business was to survey 320 acres (the eastern half of Section 15)—what would become downtown Palm Springs. They also commenced construction of 19 miles of rock-lined irrigation canals from the nearby canyons.
The partners signed a written agreement with McCallum, assigning him sole responsibility for all the promotional activities and plans for the auction of the lots. McCallum took the baton—and ran with it. He wrote the railroad requesting reduced fares for his planned land auction. He blanketed the state with seductive advertising. One ad read: “Perfect climate, wonderful scenery, pure mountain water; the earliest fruit region in the state; absolute cure for all pulmonary and kindred diseases.”
The people came—and they bought. On auction day, Nov. 1, 1887, some 137 parcels of land were sold for a total of more than $50,000. Soon the purchased acreage began to blossom with a variety of crops: alfalfa, figs, apricots, grapes, melons, corn, oranges and grapefruit. By 1888, land sales were booming. Special trains stopped at Seven Palms, and residents picked up prospective settlers in buckboards.
A post office had been established at nearby Palmdale (now Smoke Tree Ranch) for another development. Then McCallum’s son Harry established another post office in downtown Palm Springs and officially began using the new name, which was also the name of the town’s only hotel. In a letter, he wrote, “And by the way, I might inform you that after July 1, 1890, ‘Palm Springs’ is the P.O. address and not Palmdale, which it has been.”
Crops grew; settlers moved in; and optimism prevailed. However, Mother Nature remains undefeated, and in 1893, a 21-day record rainfall flooded crops and wiped out irrigation ditches. That was followed by a devastating 11-year drought (1894-1905) which drove away many of the settlers.
While the climate improved Johnny’s health for some time, he eventually had a relapse and died at the age of 26 on Jan. 17, 1891. Another son, Wallace, died in 1896 at age 30, of heart disease brought on by alcoholism.
The patriarch himself, Judge John G. McCallum, died at age 70 on Feb. 5, 1897, of heart failure. He died frustrated, as he had just learned of the federal government’s decision to cut McCallum and the white settlers off from the water supply from the Tahquitz and Andreas canyons in favor of the Native Americans.
His son Harry tried to carry on for his father, but died at age 30 of pulmonary tuberculosis while visiting Chicago in 1901. Then daughter May McCallum Forline died in 1908, leaving a 3-year-old daughter, Marjorie. The only surviving McCallum child—who would care for her aging mother Emily until her 1914 death, and the one who would continue the Palm Springs legacy begun by her father—was the determined Miss Pearl McCallum, who went on to establish the Tennis Club and much more.
Sources for this article include The McCallum Saga: The Story of the Founding of Palm Springs, by Katherine Ainsworth (Palm Springs Desert Museum, 1973); and Palm Springs: First 100 Years, by Mayor Frank M. Bogert (Palm Springs Heritage Associates, 1987).