Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Michael Kindig
Taken: January 13, 2011
Caption: Submarine
Additional Description: Desert submarines were first built in the Coachella Valley in the early 1920s. The first subs were designed as sleeping rooms measuring only about 8 X 10 feet. Others were built as cooling rooms for produce and milk. A much later model served as a four-bed ward in one of Indios first hospitals.

In the late 1950s a hundred or more were still in use in the Southern Pacific Railroad yards as sleeping rooms for train crews. The submarine has all but disappeared today.

The cooling process used was a very simple one. Water from the center pipe trickled down over the burlap-covered metal walls, and through the natural process of evaporation, the interior was cooled. Years later this process led to the development of the evaporative cooler still popular today.

Donated by: Henry Withrow
Plaqced by: Paul Curtwright
July 1987
Submitted: December 25, 2011, by Michael Kindig of Elk Grove, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p186043
File Size: 3.627 Megabytes

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