Sarah McCormick Seekatz
A native of the Coachella Valley, Sarah McCormick Seekatz is a PhD candidate in history at the University of California, Riverside. Her dissertation will explore Southern California's date industry, booster efforts, and fascination with the Greater Middle East throughout the 20th century. She was a recent Autry National Center Jonathan Heritage Foundation Fellow and will be a Western History Association Martin Ridge Fellow at the Huntington Library this summer.
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Thirty miles east of Indio, California in a largely uninhabited desert landscape, sits the largest military training ground in U.S. history, though you might not have heard of it.
The towns in the eastern side of the Coachella Valley have long utilized romanticized portrayals of the Middle East to shape views of their own desert backyard.