Cabot's Old Indian Pueblo Museum

About this property

Cabot's Pueblo Museum is an American historic house museum located in Desert Hot Springs, California, and built by Cabot Yerxa, an early pioneer of the Colorado Desert. A large, Hopi-style pueblo, built in the Pueblo Revival Style, it contains artworks, artifacts of American Indian and Alaska Native cultures, and memorabilia of early desert homesteader life. The museum may also be referred to as Cabot's Old Indian Pueblo Museum, Cabot's Trading Post or Yerxa's Discovery. The house and surrounding structures were self-built by Cabot Abram Yerxa (1883–1965), an early 20th-century homesteader in the Coachella Valley. It is named as "Cabot’s Old Indian Pueblo Museum" in its application for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The California State Parks Office of Historic Preservation lists it as "Yerxa's Discovery". Yerxa was an adventurer who first settled on 160 acres (65 ha) in Southern California's Coachella Valley in 1913. He established his home, The Eagle's Nest, on a hill he would later name Miracle Hill. Using a pick and shovel to dig wells, Yerxa discovered two aquifers on opposite sides of the hill, which happened to be separated by the Mission Creek Fault, a branch of the San Andreas Fault. The first aquifer was a natural hot spring with a temperature of 110 °F (43 °C) in the Desert Hot Springs Sub-Basin and which would later help give rise to the area's spas and resorts. The second, on the opposite side of the fault, was a cold aquifer of the Mission Springs Sub-Basin. This same aquifer provides fresh water to the city of Desert Hot Springs and has received awards for exceptional taste. In May, 1917, Yerxa left the desert to join the Army during World War I. He returned to the desert in 1937, and in 1939 began building a museum to house his collection of Native American and other artifacts. He fashioned the building as a Hopi Indian pueblo in honor of the Indian people, and he opened Cabot's Old Indian Pueblo in 1950. He operated it with his wife, Portia, until his death in 1965. Upon his death Portia returned to her native Texas and the structure was abandoned. Yerxa's friend Cole Eyraud protected the settlement after his death and after it had been abandoned and vandalized. Eyraud and his family purchased the complex, restoring it and later donating it to the City of Desert Hot Springs. The centerpiece of the complex is a large, Hopi-style pueblo, in the Pueblo Revival Style of architecture. The main building is a four-story, 5000 square foot (465 sq.m) structure with 35 rooms, 150 windows, 65 doors and 30 different roof levels. The pueblo and all the outbuildings on the site were built primarily from scrap wood and sheet metal all scavenged from the surrounding desert by Yerxa. It has a system of vents and shafts built into the walls to keep it cool in the summer.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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