To the Cahuilla, the native people of this valley, this point of land was important because it marked access to water, and they dug a well into the wash with steps leading down to the water level less than 300 yards from this site; that well gave Indian Wells its name before floods destroyed it in 1916. In 1862 frontiersman William Bradshaw left San Bernardino seeking a route to the Colorado River for gold, used the well here, followed well-traveled Indian trails to the river, named the route the Bradshaw Trail, and helped make this area a major stop on the Bradshaw Stage line until the line ceased in 1877 because gold was depleted and the railroad arrived in 1876. Beginning in 1906, Norman “Happy” Lundbeck homesteaded this property with a home, store, and farm that became known as Point Happy; after his death in 1913, his wife owned it until its sale in 1922 to Chauncey and Marie Clark, who developed the Point Happy Date Garden and Ranch and bred Arabian horses there, including one ridden by Rudolph Valentino in “The Sheik.” After Chauncey Clark died in 1926, Marie Clark continued running the ranch until her death in 1948, when she left Point Happy to Claremont College; it was later sold to William DuPont Jr., who lived there until 1965, after which the ranch land was developed into the Highland Palms neighborhood, a shopping center with La Quinta’s first supermarket, Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, and Point Happy Estates in the early 2000s.