A new College of the Desert campus is currently under construction on the site of the former Palm Springs Mall. The campus, which will bring higher education to Palm Springs, can serve as a reminder of the early education efforts of a few dedicated and insightful teachers, including Raymond Cree, the first Palm Springs school president; and Frances Stevens, a school founder who also served on the school board.
The legacy of non-Indigenous Palm Springs teachers dates back to Miss Annie Noble, who taught the children of early settlers during the 1893-1894 school year. In 1895, a small wooden schoolhouse was erected by local Southern Pacific employees after being nudged to do so by local hotelier Welwood Murray.
Teachers recruited to early Palm Springs often didn’t last long, leaving because of the isolation and the desert climate. More than 20 teachers worked with Palm Springs children from 1893 until 1922.
Raymond Cree
But some other early educators not only persevered, but served with distinction—like Raymond Cree, who in 1907 became the Riverside County superintendent of schools. Much of his early efforts were spent ensuring there were teachers for the children of the village of Palm Springs.
Cree was born in Iowa in 1875. His father brought the family (wife and four children) to settle in San Jacinto in 1885, seeking relief from his asthma. Raymond attended Chaffey College (then part of the University of Southern California), and he taught seven years in the public school system before attending Stanford University (1904-1906), where he studied public school administration.
He served as county superintendent until 1920, with time off to serve in World War I in France. In 1915, he bought 65 acres of land in Section 29—north of today’s Target store on East Palm Canyon Drive—and began to grow Deglet Noor dates and grapefruit. In 1920, he became a full-time Palm Springs resident and was appointed the first president of the Palm Springs Union High School District.
As early as 1918, Cree spearheaded attempts to get much of the area surrounding the Coachella Valley set aside as national parks and monuments. Visitors to Joshua Tree National Park have Cree, in part, to thank for that bit of protected wilderness.
Over the years, Cree increased his real estate holdings, and by the mid-1940s owned considerable land, including a section which later became the site of the Thunderbird Country Club.
Due to his dedication to education, Raymond Cree Middle School in Palm Springs is named in his honor.
Edmund Jaeger
Edmund C. Jaeger, a teacher recruited by Cree in 1915, fell in love with the desert and devoted the rest of his life to its preservation. As a young man earning money for college, he taught in the old Palm Springs wooden school while living in a nearby tent. Jaeger later became head of the zoology department at Riverside City College, where he taught for 28 years.
Concerned about the impact of growth in the Coachella Valley, Jaeger later said, “When I first rode a burro to Palm Springs in 1915—to teach five children in a one-room school—there was only one house on the road to Indio.”
Jaeger went on to become the become the country’s dean of desert naturalists and the author of several definitive books on North American deserts.
Frances Stevens
Pioneer educator Frances S. Stevens came to Palm Springs for health reasons. She had the same surname all her life—just spelled a little differently.
Born Frances Stephens in Illinois, she attended Mount Morris College, earned a degree in literature from the University of Chicago and was a teacher in the Midwest before embarking on an adventurous trip to Colorado. There, she met and married cattleman Prescott Thresher Stevens, who jokingly taught her “the correct way to spell her name.” The couple lived a frontier life, driving cattle.
In 1912, the Stevens family moved to Hollywood before relocating in 1914 to the Desert Inn in Palm Springs, hoping the warm desert air would improve Frances’ respiratory problems. She improved and immediately began helping her newfound community. Frances and P.T. Stevens built a house in the 900 block of North Palm Canyon Drive, and also maintained a residence in Hollywood.
Frances soon got involved in education and served on the desert’s school board. One time, she and a colleague got blasted in a sandstorm as they rode on horseback to the San Gorgonio Pass to welcome a newly recruited teacher.
Frances and her husband, who became a major developer in Palm Springs, donated the land and funding for what was to be known as the Palm Springs Desert School, replacing the old wooden structure. Frances died before the school was completed in 1927; the school was dedicated to her—called the Frances S. Stevens School. Palm Springs’ first bond issue later provided additional classrooms, a library and a large auditorium which served as the city’s first theater.
The city purchased the facility as a cultural arts center, and it was dedicated in 1974 by then-Vice President Gerald Ford. The school is now the home of Palm Canyon Theatre and Desert Art Center. The neighboring Frances Stevens Park on Palm Canyon Drive is constantly in use for art and cultural events.
Three of Frances Stevens’ grandchildren, the sons of Sallie Stevens and Culver Nichols, attended the school named for their grandmother. One, Steve Nichols, became president of the Palm Springs Historical Society in 2003.
Katherine Finchy
In 1922, the village welcomed a young woman who would spend the rest of her life in Palm Springs. Miss Katherine Finchy served as a Palm Springs educator for almost 30 years, retiring in 1951.
Finchy, born in 1893 in Minnesota, came to California, where she majored in English and earned her bachelor’s degree at Biola College, and a secondary degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She was the desert’s first high school teacher, and many village elders recalled being helped by Miss Finchy.
Finchy went on to become the first principal of the Frances Stevens School, and later the superintendent of the Palm Springs Desert School District. Active in numerous civic affairs, including the Palm Springs Historical Society, she also organized the Palm Springs Soroptimist Club.
Her presence made a lasting impression on Palm Springs. One of her former students later wrote: “Our teacher was Katherine Finchy—Miss Finchy—who was also the principal, disciplinarian, soft-ball referee, coach, and conductor of chin-ups and push-ups that were part of the physical fitness tests required by the Riverside County superintendent of schools. … Miss Finchy was a perfectionist, albeit a gentle and understanding one. She taught us early the value of honest dispute and difference of opinion.”
The Katherine Finchy Elementary School on Tachevah Drive was named in her honor. It was originally called the North End School, as Miss Finchy would not allow the school board to name it for her until she retired. She died in 1987, and her headstone at the Welwood Murray Cemetery proudly notes, “Katherine Finchy 1893-1987 Teacher—Leader—Friend.”
Sources for this article include The California Deserts by Edmund C. Jaeger, (Stanford University Press, 1933); Palm Springs: First Hundred Years by Mayor Frank Bogert (Heritage Publications, 1987); and Images of America: Palm Springs by Moya Henderson and the Palm Springs Historical Society (Arcadia Publishing, 2009).
CV History: Meet Four Teachers Who Aided in the Development of Palm Springs is a story from Coachella Valley Independent, the Coachella Valley’s alternative news source.