Indio travel guide

Indio, California, is a U.S. city located in the Coachella Valley of Southern California's desert region. The city is located in Riverside County, east of Palm Springs, east of Riverside, east of San Bernardino, and east of Los Angeles. The population was 49,116 at the 2000 census, but Indio has experienced fast-growth as many exurban other cities in Southern California have. According to the book History of the Coachella Valley Water District, the word indio is Spanish for Indian. Indio sits on an earlier site of a Cahuilla village, Teikweit before the 1880s.
Indio is one of Southern California's most important agricultural regions as well, once responsible for a large percentage of the nation's date crop; however, with all the new residential and recreational development, the date groves are being pushed more to the south and southeast of Indio. Even the grove of date palms at the Riverside County Date Festival fairgrounds has been torn out by the county. Travelers from around the world still can stop by Shields Date Gardens, a famous date grower that maintains a large retail store along State Highway 111 in Indio. There are citrus groves and vegetable fields surrounding the city limits, but rapid development of new housing tracts and golf courses in the "East Valley" in the 1990s and 2000s has displaced most of the agricultural space. (...) more....