The new Agua Caliente Cultural Museum is looking forward to welcoming visitors from around the world when it opens at the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza later this year.
The Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza in downtown Palm Springs is a cultural heritage destination, a sacred place for Tribal Members and guests to celebrate the history, culture, traditions, and modern life of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. The 5.8-acre complex features the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum with an education garden and the newly opened The Spa at Séc-he, a luxurious 73,000-square-foot complex and state-of-the-art spa fed by the ancient Agua Caliente Hot Mineral Spring.
They are joined by the Gathering Plaza and Oasis Trail, which is activated with flowing water, Washingtonia filifera palm trees (the only palm tree native to the California desert), and stunning rock formations that capture the essence of the Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon, the Agua Caliente people’s ancestral home.
While the Plaza connects ancient and contemporary life, the Oasis Trail reflects the sequestered nature of the canyons-water-filled areas that provided the ancestors of the Agua Caliente people with cooler living conditions in the hot desert summers. The Plaza provides a peaceful place to ponder and reflect on the place the Agua Caliente people call home.
Offering exhibits and education programs covering a variety of topics ranging from Agua Caliente history and culture to contemporary land stewardship and conservation, the mission of the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum is to share and celebrate the story of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. The 48,000-square-foot Museum features Agua Caliente art, artifacts and media to animate specific pieces of the Tribe’s story.
Many artifacts, such as manos, metates and projectile points, were recovered from the Plaza site during construction in 2018, with some of the items radiocarbon dating as far back as 8,000-plus years. Many of these items will be displayed to demonstrate the Tribe’s enduring habitation of the region. In keeping with the Tribe’s mission to tell its story through this museum, individual Tribal members’ stories will appear throughout the permanent exhibition space.
The Cultural Plaza defines who the Agua Caliente people are in the 21st century by celebrating the Tribe’s culture, heritage and, most importantly, the Tribe’s traditions.
