A Bit of La Quinta History Carved in a Mountainside

The first time my friend Jean and I went to dinner at the new Cliff House restaurant in La Quinta, we sat in the Point Happy Room.

There are other dining rooms--the Sunset Room, looking out over the Coachella Valley, and the Mountain Dining Room, facing the rock on the inside of Point Happy, back-lit by soft amber lights.

All summer, we had watched heavy machinery hollow out a series of chambers in the stone mountain.

When construction had started on the restaurant the first part of last year, we couldn’t imagine how they were going to build anything on the great big stone. They didn’t. They built it into it.

The mountain has been called Point Happy since the early 1900s when Norman (Happy) Lundbeck came to La Quinta.

He took up ranching at what he called the Point Happy Ranch just across Highway 111 from where the new Cliff House stands.

You can look across the road from the restaurant and see the old sign for the ranch entrance still standing.

To look about 500 yards down the slope from the Cliff House is to be reminded of the first people here, the Cahuilla Indians. The Indian women walked down the slope to fill their jugs with water from the springs below. The area was called Indian Wells, now the name of the small town there.

Maybe none of the towns would be here were it not for Maj. William Bradshaw.

When gold was discovered in the Colorado River in 1862, Bradshaw developed the first trail through the Coachella Valley and across the Colorado Desert to the Arizona gold fields.

Stagecoaches followed Bradshaw’s trail and Point Happy, rising from the valley floor, became a landmark.

The Cliff House was three years in the planning and cost $5 million. It uses Spanish ranch architecture throughout and Indian artifacts for decoration.

The dining rooms tell the story of the days of the Cahuilla Indians and early ranch life. There are Indian tools and weapons and a pair of beaded buckskin gauntlets mounted in a shadowbox.

The restaurant has the feel of having been there since the ladies trudged down to the well with their water jugs.

From the Cahuillas to the latest newcomer to La Quinta, travelers have found the landmark Point Happy a welcome sight.