The Agua Caliente Hot Spring (Sec-he)
Palm Springs, California, United States
The Cahuilla hot spring at the center of Palm Springs, held sacred by the Agua Caliente Band for centuries and now interpreted on tribal terms at the 2023 cultural center.
The hot mineral spring beneath downtown Palm Springs is the reason the city exists, and it is the Cahuilla people's Séc-he, the boiling water: the spring at the center of Agua Caliente Band cultural life, a place of healing and ceremony for centuries before any resort. The tribe has never lost title to its square mile around the spring, a checkerboard remnant of treaty-era land law, and its stewardship now sets the site's terms.
The Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza, opened 2023, presents the spring, the creation story of the Cahuilla, and the landscape on the tribe's own framing, with the sacred water visible in a transparency floor above its source. It is the strongest recent model of a tribal nation interpreting its own sacred site inside a tourist city.
Visiting
The Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza, 140 N Indian Canyon Dr, Palm Springs; see the tribe's site for hours and etiquette.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories