Palm Springs Life - November 2 1960 - Cover Poster

Palm Springs Life cover 1960. Artist Earl Cordrey depicts the opening of Palm Springs' El Mirador Hotel to signify the beginning of another season on the desert.

Perhaps no other Palm Springs landmark is as famous as the Mirador's pink tower.

Earl Cordrey (1902-1977) was a founder of Palm Springs Life who designed the original logo and illustrated covers for the magazine until the mid-1960s.

A Southern California native, he trained at the prestigious Chouinard School of Art (which was since absorbed by CalArts) and worked in the studio of the revered early desert landscape painter Sam Hyde Harris before marrying his wife, Catherine, moving to New York, and devoting himself to magazine illustration.

The couple moved to the desert in the early 1940s, and Cordrey quickly became a fixture of the local art scene.