La Quinta (Spanish for “The Fifth”) is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States. Located amid Indian Wells and Indio, it is one of the nine cities of the Coachella Valley. The population was 37,467 at the 2010 census, up from 23,694 at the 2000 census. The Robb Report credits La Quinta as the leading golf destination in the US. Among those destinations is the La Quinta Resort and Club, a resort dating to 1926, where director Frank Capra wrote the screenplay for Lost Horizon. The Tom Fazio-designed golf course at The Quarry at La Quinta is ranked along with the summit 100 golf courses in the United States. In January 2008, the Arnold Palmer Classic Course at the city’s SilverRock Golf Resort became one of the four host golf courses for the annual Bob Hope Chrysler Classic PGA golf tournament.

The Cahuilla Indians were the first inhabitants of La Quinta.

In the late-19th century and early-20th century (1880–1920), agriculture developed in present-day La Quinta and “East Valley” by pre-modern (mountain water runoff or gate water springs) and open-minded irrigation techniques. At the time, California and federal home surveyors confirmed the sand dunes uninhabitable, only the hard rock ground of the “Marshall Cove” held potential cultivation and residential development.

In 1926, Walter Morgan usual the La Quinta Resort at the northern section of Marshall Cove as a type of secluded hideaway for easy to use Hollywood’s celebrities and socialites. The Resort was the site for the Coachella Valley’s first golf course, coinciding later than the construction and pavement of State Route 111 in the 1930s. Further evolve of Washington Street in the 1950s and 1960s partnered La Quinta once US Highways 60 and 99 (became Interstate 10 in the 1970s).