Eldorado Country Club

Johnny Dawson and Jimmy Hines, who had helped create Thunderbird, chose the site for Eldorado and opened the course in 1957 with a Lawrence Hughes design. In November 1959 it hosted the Ryder Cup, which the American team captained by Sam Snead won 8.5 to 3.5. It remains the last Ryder Cup played west of Texas. The club also hosted the Bob Hope Desert Classic 17 times between 1963 and 1989. In 2003 Tom Fazio rebuilt the course from the ground up, reconfiguring holes, enlarging tees and greens and adding extensive water, while keeping the classic feel. It plays about 6,634 yards from the back, finishing with a long par 4 guarded by water down the left. The course is open from November through May.

The clubhouse was designed by William F. Cody, the celebrated midcentury architect, and it remains one of the desert's landmark buildings. Inside, a room honors Dwight Eisenhower, and a replica Ryder Cup trophy and photographs from 1959 recall the club's biggest week. In 1998 the club opened a $4 million fitness center, pool and tennis facility, and in 2017, around the 60th anniversary, it added Ike's, a casual dining venue paid for entirely by anonymous member donations. That detail says a lot about how members feel about the place.

Eldorado is member-owned, and membership is by invitation only. The club states plainly that membership is not tied to real estate in any way: buying a home does not entitle you to join, and members are not required to live inside the gates. The usual path is to visit as a member's guest and, over time, be proposed. Eldorado does not publish fees, and it keeps its roster private, in keeping with what it calls the Eldorado Way. Buyers who hope to join should treat the home and the club as two separate decisions.

The homes around Eldorado sit on some of the most generous lots in Indian Wells, roughly 20,000 to more than 40,000 square feet, along quiet streets and cul-de-sacs that wrap the fairways. Many are flat-roofed midcentury homes from the late 1950s and 1960s, some designed by William Cody, and others have been rebuilt as larger contemporary estates. Owners belong to the Eldorado Property Owners Association, which is separate from the club. Floor plans typically run from three to five bedrooms, and the mix of preserved originals and new construction gives the neighborhood real character.

Eldorado has a long list of famous names. Eisenhower and Mamie wintered here after the White House, in a house beside the 11th fairway, and Presidents Kennedy and Nixon landed helicopters on that fairway to visit him. Eisenhower and Governor Ronald Reagan broke ground on Eisenhower Medical Center in 1967, a project Eldorado members helped fund. Yet the club is understated and does not trade on celebrity. Life is quiet, centered on golf, tennis and dinners with friends, and the cove keeps the wind down on winter afternoons.