Holiday season greeting cards bearing desert images naturally lack idyllic photos of snow, aside from the images of Mount San Jacinto capped in white. But the holidays in the Palm Springs area are no less gorgeous than anywhere else in America. It may be even more exotic and charming with the extra twinkling lights illuminating the palm trees, set against a backdrop of sand dunes instead of snowflakes and icicles.

Willard in the desert

According to Christine Giles, associate curator at Palm Springs Art Museum, Willard began photographing here in the desert as far back as 1914. He was 20 years old then, a good thing since those early ‘portable’ cameras were heavy and clumsy. Willard preferred to use 8 x 10 cameras for his best pictures. By comparison to the hefty metal one he owned, the wooden camera weighed “only”
six pounds.

Willard often traversed the desert by burro, carrying the glass negative plates to spots as far afield as the Salton Sea. The young photographer later bought a car to transport his equipment, once proudly posing for a picture while driving over sand dunes. That black and white photo, along with his early 1900s Goerz Camera, is part of the museum’s collection of 16,000 of Willard’s items.

“The Stephen H. Willard Photography Collection & Archive was acquired from his daughter Dr. Beatrice Willard in 1999 and 2000,” states Giles, who has been working on the collection since 2002. “Willard photographs, however, have been part of the museum’s collection from the 1940s, and in the 1970s his wife donated some paintings.”

The Willards moved to Palm Springs in 1922. Married just a year, the photographer and his wife, also named Beatrice, both worked to earn a living. He sold his photos and photo-paintings through the Desert Inn Gallery as well as the Trading Post, run by his wife.

We have much to thank him for: in 1936, Willard’s photographs helped convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the Joshua Tree National Monument, now a national park.

But in 1947, discouraged by the increasing development in the desert and the gradual loss of his favorite local landscape sites to photograph, Willard and his family left Palm Springs. He died in Owens Valley in 1966. Astoundingly, in spite of his brilliant work and achievements, Willard is not widely known. His name has often been omitted from art and photography books documenting this period and the Californian desert.

Postcards from the past

A huge portion of the museum’s Willard legacy is currently being digitized by Ashley Dunbar, a young newcomer to the desert and the Museum’s Photography Collection assistant. Among the scanned images are old greeting cards and postcards with local scenes, as well as some of the Christmas note cards written by Willard personally.

“There are 122 note cards, which include 65 greeting cards, as well as one calendar in the collection, and 993 postcards by Willard,” reports Dunbar. “He worked with Curt Teich & Co. in Chicago for postcard printing. We do have postcards of desert landscape photographs that are based on his photo-paintings too.”

In 1919, the multi-talented Willard, who also wrote and published articles, started hand coloring his photographs. No wonder that some of his most appealing legacies are the Palm Springs postcards printed with his colorful images. They’re a collector’s delight, easily available, typically for under $10 each, through various online vendors at eBay.

The museum’s own collection of Willard postcards is a journey down memory lane into an era of glamour. The images depict the El Mirador Hotel, The Desert Inn, the Ingleside Inn, The Racquet Club, the Tennis Club, La Plaza and, of course, Palm Canyon Drive, which he called “The Village Street.“

Today, Desert Regional Medical Center has taken El Mirador’s place. Only the bell tower from the old resort remains. “El Mirador offers many opportunities for healthful recreation; swimming, tennis, golf, riding, skeet and other sports may be enjoyed all winter long in this ‘Garden of the Sun,’” reads the text on the back of the postcard by Willard, one with people relaxing by the pool, mountains in the background.

The Desert Inn was demolished to erect the downtown—and now dilapidated—Fashion Plaza that currently awaits its own destiny. But, on Willard’s postcards, The Desert Inn gates still open onto Palm Canyon Drive, and its bungalows are at the foot of the mountain, where the museum now stands. Happily, the Ingleside Inn, The Racquet Club (partly as a condo complex development now), the Palm Springs Tennis Club, La Plaza and the downtown main strip still exist, showing changes that time brings.

A home in a garden

Willard’s home and studio still stand in Moorten Botanical Garden and Cactarium on South Palm Canyon. Clark Moorten greets visitors to this magical Desertland. “I’m 65, but I remember the late Willard,” he says. “My mother Pat knew him well. Stephen also had a downtown studio by the Plaza. And Betty, his only daughter, who’s deceased now, used to visit us often. She was glad that her former family home is here in our garden and that it’s open to public as a Palm Springs tourist attraction.”

A year before Stephen Willard left Palm Springs, he produced a calendar (the only one in his collection). It captured the spirit of the desert and the place he called home for 25 years. The calendar is composed of a trimmed postcard with an image of a blooming cactus, and the individual months are attached to the paper backing. The title on the calendar simply reads The Desert Calendar, and underneath the January 1946 page, only that timeless expression of goodwill is written: “Greetings from Palm Springs.” What better way to send your own than with a framed photograph or postcard first created by this local visionary.