Photo: Carol M. Highsmith (Public domain)
A self-guided audio tour of Palm Springs in two parts. On foot downtown: the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, completed in 2023 on the reservation land of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, and the Spa at Séc-he, built over the hot spring that gave the place its name, with the story of Section 14, where the city had the homes of some 195 families knocked down and burned. Then the Plaza Theatre of 1936, the McCallum Adobe of 1884 and the Cornelia White House on the Village Green, E. Stewart Williams's 1961 bank that is now the Architecture and Design Center, his Palm Springs Art Museum, and the Aluminaire House of 1931. By car, seen from the street: City Hall, dedicated in 1957, Frank Sinatra's Twin Palms, Richard Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House, Donald Wexler's prefabricated steel houses, and Albert Frey's Tramway Gas Station of 1965, with its wing-like roof at the northern gateway to the city.
13 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 51 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 6 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, The Spa at Séc-he, Plaza Theatre.
McCallum Adobe, Cornelia White House, Architecture and Design Center, Palm Springs Art Museum, Aluminaire House.
Palm Springs City Hall, Twin Palms (the Sinatra House), Kaufmann Desert House, Wexler Steel Houses, Tramway Gas Station.
The Agua Caliente Band's museum of 2023, shaped like the first coils of a Cahuilla basket, and the story of Section 14.
Built directly over the Agua Caliente hot mineral spring, where people have lived beside the water for more than 8,400 years.
Julia Carnell's 1936 movie theater, its auditorium walls lined with little Spanish façades under a ceiling of twinkling stars.
E. Stewart Williams's glass-and-steel bank of 1961, with its old vault door and drive-up banking window still in place.
The house Frank Sinatra commissioned in 1947, E. Stewart Williams's first residential design, seen from the street.
Albert Frey's 1965 service station at the northern gateway, its steel roof dipping in the middle and rising at the edges like a wing.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 13 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Palm Springs — Desert Modernism and the Agua Caliente, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, McCallum Adobe, Architecture and Design Center, Palm Springs Art Museum and Palm Springs City Hall. That is about 25 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 13 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.