Profiled 5-6-24

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, or Tribe, is a federally-recognized tribe with a 32,000-acre reservation in and around the City of Palm Springs in Riverside County, California. The Cahuilla inhabited this area as early as 5,000 BCE and the reservation was established in 1877. 

In 2007, the Tribal Council adopted an update to the Indian Canyons Master Plan. The Indian Canyons encompass the Andreas, Murray, and Palm canyons located south of the City of Palm Springs on the eastern side of the San Jacinto Mountains. This area is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is recognized internationally as a unique desert environment and the home of significant natural and cultural sites. It is additionally significant that the descendants of those who created the outstanding natural and pre-Columbian cultural resources here still live in this area.

In the 1920s and 30s, California and the federal government proposed the creation of a state or national park here. The Tribe instead chose to retain control of the area but make it available to the public. In the 1950s, the federal government allotted parcels within this area to individual Tribal members but allowed the Tribe to retain approximately 1,300 acres in the palm oasis portion of the Indian Canyons as Tribal Reserves for the benefit and use of the Tribe. 

In the 1970s and 80s, a developer assembled roughly 550 acres of Allotted Trust Lands by acquisition and long-term leases, proposing to build a golf course, tennis facilities, and a hotel on the more developable portions of this area. In 1993, using money from a 1988 Bond Act, the State of California acquired 356 acres in this area and conveyed title for these properties to the Tribe as part of the Reservation. Another 92 acres were added in the 1990s. There are now various designations in this area: Tribal Reserve, (Tribal Trust), Allotted Trust, and Fee lands which are regulated by the Tribe; and Heritage Park, which is open to the public, tasked with preserving natural and cultural resources, and managed under an agreement between the Tribe and California Department of Parks and Recreation.

The planning area for the Indian Canyons Master Plan includes lands surrounding Heritage Park with the goal of eventually acquiring all of this land to improve the ability of the Tribe to protect and manage the park lands as a single entity. Some of the ecological resources in this area include wetland and riparian habitat, desert scrub communities, and the migration corridor for Peninsular Bighorn Sheep. Archeological and historic resources here include rock art, house foundations, ceremonial sites, irrigation ditches, and food processing areas. 

The non-Tribally held lands are of greatest interest for acquisition because they contain sensitive archeological resources and because their development would be incompatible with the character of the Indian Canyons area. The Indian Canyons plan states that acquisition funding could come from Riverside County, the State of California, and the federal government. Property owners can also dedicate land for conservation as mitigation for development. The Indian Canyons Plan designated most of the privately-held land in the planning area as Open Space – Rural, allowing one single-family dwelling per 40 acres, a density that was subsequently increased to one dwelling per 20 acres.  

The Tribal Habitat Conservation Plan, THCP, adopted In 2010, provided for a Habitat Preserve for the long term conservation of Covered Species. At full development, a Habitat Preserve of 18,870 acres is proposed to result primarily from mitigation measures required of future development and from acquisitions funded by the Tribe, private conservancies, and governmental entities. Section 4.5.4 of this plan also provides for what is refered to as density transfers from land in the Mountains & Canyons Conservation Area (MCCA) to appropriate receiving sites. The plan noted that these applicable sites could not be mapped at the time of adoption of the THCP and that such transfers would have to be reviewed on a site specific basis.

The THCP specifies that the Peninsular bighorn sheep corridor study area includes Palm Canyon, part of the Indian Canyons. One of the strategies for preserving this area involves the transfer of development rights to land elsewhere within the Plan Area. Page 4-86 clarifies that the southeast corner of Section 2 (T5S, R4E) could achieve 15 percent development or alternatively transfer development potential to a one-sixteenth-section receiving area in the northeast corner of Section 2 (T5S, R4E) which could then be developed to 100 percent development subject to applicable adjacency and mitigation requirements.

Similarly small areas totaling 104 acres in Section 10 (T4S, R4E) and Section 2 (T5S, R4E) identified as having low priority for conservation could achieve 100 percent development or alternatively transfer development to the same receiving area described above.

The Tribal Land Use Ordinance provides that the severing of development rights from a sending site must occur at the same time these rights attach to a receiving site. It requires the recording of a document extinguishing all development rights from a sending site and the number of rights being removed. Likewise, a recorded document on the receiving site must indicate the additional rights provided by the transfer, the donor parcel that generated these rights, and acknowledgement that the transfer is permanent and that the rights cannot be further transferred, sold, traded or otherwise removed from the receiving parcel. 

To date, no transfers have occurred. One possible reason is that the receiving area identified in the THCP is relatively small and has already had more than half of its land area developed. This receiving area also contains archeological and historic sites that could be difficult for future development to avoid. Conceivably, the Tribe could work with the City of Palm Springs to generate receiving areas under the jurisdiction of that city capable of accommodating inter-jurisdictional transfers. The Tribe also maintains jurisdiction over various holdings within Palm Springs that could presumably become receiving sites; however, these sites are designated for governmental purposes and might need to be redesignated for development in order to become receiving sites.

Although no transfers have occurred, no development has occurred in the sending area primarily because most of it is steeply-sloped mountainous terrain that would require expensive retaining walls and other features to develop.