The Pools of Palm Springs

By 1955, Palm Springs already had 900 swimming pools within its city limits, and Esther Williams was the pool cover girl of the era, swimming it up at El Mirador Hotel, with its Olympic-sized pool with five diving boards and an underwater observation window. (She once guessed that she’d swum, oh, about 1,250 miles for all of her films.)

Today, there are some 40,000 pools  within the city limits, which, astoundingly, amounts to about one pool for every year-round resident (in the winter, the population doubles as snowbirds fly in for the season).

From “In Palm Springs, To Pool Hop is to Time Travel,” by Bonnie Tsui for the New York Times; Photo of the Frey House II by Beth Coller

#pool #palmsprings #california #pools #elmiradorhotel #hotel #travel #swim #story #stories #thestorybar