Ruth Hardy is best known for developing the enduring Ingleside Inn and going on to serve on the Palm Springs City Council—but her legacy goes far beyond those two accomplishments.
She was Palm Springs’ first female City Council member (1948-1960), and one of her proposals was to plant stately palm trees along Palm Canyon Drive. The city of Palm Springs honored her posthumously by changing the name of the city’s largest park from Tamarisk Park to Ruth Hardy Park.
Ruth Hardy Park, at 700 Tamarisk Road, is spread over 22 acres from Tamarisk Road on the south to Tachevah Drive on the north, and from Via Miraleste on the west to Avenida Caballeros on the east. (Katherine Finchy Elementary School is located in the northeast portion of the block.) The park was built in 1948 on former Torney General Hospital land. The hospital itself is now Desert Regional Medical Center, adjacent to Wellness Park—a five-acre section with fitness facilities and exercise equipment along a beautiful desert-landscaped quarter-mile walking trail—on the park’s northwest corner.
Ruth Hardy Park hosts numerous community events throughout the year, including the annual Palm Springs Firefighters Fish Fry and the ONE-PS (Organized Neighborhoods of Palm Springs) Picnic and Community Expo. To say Ruth Hardy Park is popular is an understatement. However, the park’s namesake is less well-known.
The Ingleside Inn
Ruth Hardy was a businesswoman best known for developing the historic Ingleside Inn.
Ruth and her husband, Jack, arrived in Palm Springs from Indiana and began operating the Casita Del Monte, a small hotel. (The couple would later divorce.)
The Ingleside was originally a two-acre estate built starting in 1922 for Carrie Birge, the widow of the manufacturer of the exclusive Pierce-Arrow motorcar. George Washington Smith, a Santa Barbara architect and Spanish Colonial Revival specialist, was called upon to design the extravagant home, and local builder Alvah Hicks was the contractor. Mrs. Birge spared no expense with the details; she made several buying trips to Europe to furnish the place. It was said that the value of the antiques was greater than the land and building combined.
After Carrie Birge left the United States to live in Paris, her son, Humphrey, and his wife, Ethel, took over the estate. Their daughter, Caroline, ended up marrying Harold Hicks, son of the contractor who built the Ingleside and a prominent Palm Springs businessman in his own right.
In 1935, Ruth Hardy bought the Birge estate and turned it into the Ingleside Inn, a first-class, 20-room hotel. She began by inviting special guests into her home—for a fee, of course. She retained much of the original elegant furnishings and antiques, including a bed allegedly slept in by Queen Isabella and a priceless bust of Petrarch’s Laura. The rooms all had fireplaces, and Hardy later added bungalows.
During Hardy’s tenure at the Ingleside Inn, she created an invitation-only hideaway hosting many famous guests. Opera star Lily Pons had her own suite each season for 13 years before she bought her own home. Industrial magnates and royalty joined the likes of Howard Hughes, J.C. Penney and others at the Ingleside. Ava Gardner, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor (who stayed in Villa 2), Greer Garson, Clark Gable, Margaret O’Brien, Salvador Dali and Lowell Thomas were also guests. Old-timers recall Hardy serving free champagne to guests on any days the sun didn’t shine. She also was a tinkerer, and purportedly once made a workable air conditioner out of odd parts.
The savvy hotelier Hardy was a fan of city pioneer Nellie Coffman, another native of Indiana who had been running the Desert Inn. Hardy respected the older innkeeper’s ability—and allegedly followed Nellie around to get ideas.
The City Council and Palm Trees
The first elected female Palm Springs City Council member served with distinction for 12 years, from 1948-1960. She came up with the idea to line the city’s main downtown street with namesake palm trees. The city embraced Hardy’s vision, and in the summer of 1949, 300 palm trees were planted up and down Palm Canyon Drive. That fall, the city dedicated the palm trees in an official ceremony.
The 300 trees were half Washingtonia filifera (desert fan palms) and half Washingtonia robusta (Mexican fan palms). Desert fan palms are very tall with thin trunks (about 12 inches in diameter) that sway in the wind. The Mexican fan palms have thicker trunks, and the skirt effect created by dying fronds that droop. Palm trees can live well past 100 years and are able to withstand high winds and even fire. Palm Canyon, the largest of the Indian canyons in South Palm Springs, has the greatest native assembly of desert fan palms in the world.
Ruth Hardy died at the age of 72 in 1965 and is interred at Palm Springs’ Welwood Murray Cemetery. The Ingleside Inn, at 200 W. Ramon Road, was sold to a wealthy person from San Francisco who maintained it for 10 years. In 1975, former New York businessman Mel Haber bought the hotel and spent $500,000 to renovate the property and add the upscale Melvyn’s restaurant. Under Haber, the Ingleside resumed attracting the rich and famous, including actor/Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Sinatra and many others. Haber, who also authored two books about Palm Springs, died in 2016.
The Ingleside remains one of the most exclusive hotels in Palm Springs. Ruth Hardy Park welcomes locals and tourists alike—and Hardy’s downtown Palm Springs palm trees continue to provide photo backdrops for visiting tourists to send back home.
Sources for this article include Bedtime Stories of the Legendary Ingleside Inn in Palm Springs by Mel Haber (Ingleside Press, 1996); Palm Springs: First 100 Years by Mayor Frank M. Bogert (Palm Springs Heritage Associates, 1987); “Palm Springs’ Ingleside Inn has storied past,” by Renee Brown, The Desert Sun, Dec. 5, 2015; and “Ruth Hardy’s Palm Trees” by Denise Ortuno-Neil, Coachella Valley Weekly, Feb. 19, 2015.