COACHELLA. The name for the desert town and valley was coined from Coahulla and Conchilla (Spanish, meaning “little shell”) with the “I” of Conchilla changed to “e”. Why and from what names “Coachella” was coined makes a long and complicated story.

In the beginning, the valley was shown on the 1856 Map of Public surveys as “Coahuilla Valley”, the name U.S. Deputy Surveyor John La Croze used in May of that same year when he was surveying desert townships and sections. Mindful of his instructions to describe land for its possible uses, he commented that “good water can be obtained by digging 15 or 20 feet anywhere” in “Coahuilla Valley” and that “the land…..I think only requires rain or seasons to produce excellent crops of grain.”  It is not known whether La Croze had seen the 1856 map or if he had heard the valley called by this name by others in reference to the Cahuilla Indians who were the sole occupants at that early time.

The 1857 Britton & Ray Map showed “Couvilla Valley” stretching from San Gorgonio Pass to Cabizones”, old, old Chief Cabezón’s village near the north end of what is now the Salton Sea. The 1857 Map of Public Surveys showed “Coahuilla Valley” and “Cabezon’s”, the terminology used thereafter for that map series. Bancroft’s 1868 map showed “Cohuilla Valley”, which was changed back on the 1873 von Leicht-Craven map to “Coahuilla Valley” and there the matter of spelling remained, as far as maps go, until after the turn of the century.

Miners and travelers had their own names. In a letter written by a miner to the Los Angeles Star and published on July 19, 1862, reference was made to “the Cabazon Desert”, while Clarence King, who rode mule back from the Colorado River to San Bernardino in early May 1866, called it “Chabezon Valley”  for some unexplainable reason. Oscar Loew of the Wheeler Survey reported in 1878 on the “millions of minute fresh-water shells (Amnicola thryonia)” that littered the floor of what he called “Coahuila Valley”, “Coahuila (Cabezon) Valley”, or ”Cabazon Valley…also called Coahuila Valley.” Loew’s indecision as shown by his use of the two names for the valley was a foreshadowing of what was to come when settlers, anticipated by John La Croze in 1856, began to arrive to farm the land. In 1900, Frances Anthony made a trip through the desert (identifying it only as “Colorado Desert”) by horse and buggy and was fascinated by the “hundreds of acres of tiny grayish-white shells covering the ground like dirty snow. They varied in size from a pinhead to a small grain of rice: here and there were spots of others as large as kernels of corn, and some mussel shells two inches long.”

At about that time, A. G. Tingman, Indio pioneer, railroad man, merchant, miner, and generous grubstaker of prospectors, had also been thinking of the myriads of little shells and, having developed a genuine liking for the name of “Conchilla” as a descriptive, as well as beautiful, name, was promoting it in place of “Coahuilla.”  The date was never recorded, but at some time before September 1901, the land and water company that was developing a town site at the Southern Pacific Company’s Woodspur siding held a Sunday meeting to decide on a name for the new town. There could not have been many in attendance, as the population was sparse at that time. Of those who came to the meeting, no one liked the name of Woodspur, but there were some who favored “Coahuilla” and others who favored Tingman’s “Conchilla”. There is said to have been a spirited discussion that ended in a compromise, which was “Coachella.”  The development company then took the name of Coachella Land and Water Company, the first issue of The Submarine, a weekly newspaper, published in Indio on November 27, 1901, referred to “The people of the whole Coachella Valley”, a post office was established at Woodspur siding with the name of Coachella on November 30, 1901, with George C. Huntington as first postmaster, and the town site plat for Coachella, dated January 2, 1902, was filed on the following June 5.  Tingman is said to have exclaimed in disgust, “They have given our beautiful valley a bastard name without meaning in any language!”

It is not known whether or not Tingman, backing “Conchilla”, or the backers of “Coachella” talked to the various U.S. Geological Survey teams assigned to the general area from 1897 on into 1904: however, the U.S. Geological Survey San Jacinto Quadrangle was issued in September 1901, with the general San Gorgonio Pass-Palm Springs area shown as “Coachella Valley”, while the same government agency issued Southern California Sheet No. 1 in December 1901, with the name “Conchilla Desert” shown for the San Gorgonio Pass-Palm Springs area. Coins must then have been tossed in Washington, for the U.S. Geological survey issued the 1904 Indio Special Map showing the town of Coachella, but in slightly larger letters Conchilla Valley in the area between the Southern Pacific Company’s railroad siding of Myoma and the outliers of the Santa Rosa Mountains, and in still larger letters CONCHILLA DESERT for the area to the north, bounded by San Gorgonio Pass.

According to Ole Nordlund, it was not until January 6, 1909, after the Rand and McNally Atlas and the U.S. Postal Guide were found to be using “Coachella” that the Board on Geographic Names approved of it for what is now called Coachella Valley. Still, as late as 1913, “Conchilla Desert” was shown on General Land Office Maps and was used in the location description on the township map that accompanied the request for Snowcreek post office. There has been no dearth of stories (apparently originating with those who had favored “Conchilla”) claiming the name of Coachella to be a mistake. George Wharton James said, “Strangers unfamiliar with the name (Conchilla) and unacquainted with the Spanish tongue, mispronounced and misspelled the name”. 

James Smeaton Chase believed that “by some error the name got upon the maps as Coachella, and the blunder has been retained, until it is now signed and sealed beyond hope of correction”. Brown and Boyd  called it “a printer’s mistake…and the mistake was permitted to stand”. George Law  claimed “the word was misspelt upon the map and misspelt in general usage until the error became too well established for correction”.  Elmo Proctor, who clerked in Tingman’s Indio store “as a kid” from 1896 to 1899 and whose name has become regionally famous because of his statements concerning the origin of the name, was said by Randall Henderson in Desert Magazine, April 1938, “to have lived in Conchilla Valley at the time when a clerk in Washington misspelled the word and changed the name to Coachella as it is known today.”  Erwin G. Gudde, who also quoted Elmo Proctor, believed the government cartographers misread the name of “Conchilla” and showed it as “Coachella”.

Washington always seems to be blamed when some citizens are dissatisfied. On the other hand, the triumphant coiners of the name were well pleased, having produced a name that has been called “unique, distinctive, and euphonious.”