Surf and the desert
The desert has waves now.
The short version
Within a year, someone in London may book a flight to California specifically to surf in Palm Desert. Not near the coast. In the desert, more than 100 miles from the Pacific, between two golf courses. DSRT Surf opens late this summer on a 5.5 acre Wavegarden Cove, which Surfer magazine, having tested it, calls the largest surf lagoon in North America and twice the size of Virginia Beach’s Atlantic Surf Park. It joins Palm Springs Surf Club, running since 2024. One of the continent’s major engineered surf destinations is not being built in Orange County. It is being built beside Desert Willow.
Golf shoes off, board shorts on, same city
You could play eighteen holes in the morning and surf in the afternoon. Not metaphorically. Actually.
DSRT Surf sits within the Desert Willow Golf Resort area, which makes the juxtaposition almost absurdly Palm Desert. A 5.5 acre lagoon running 52 wave making modules, capable of up to 1,000 waves an hour, with rights, lefts, beginner rollers and performance sections running simultaneously so seventy surfers of different abilities can share the water at once.
Wavegarden’s second facility in the United States, and the largest surf lagoon in North America. More than sixty distinct wave types, including one modelled on Desert Point, the Indonesian pointbreak.
Now add a surfer inside a barrel.
Your brain already knows green fairways should not sit against brown mountains, that glass modernist houses should not stand in raw desert, that palms should not rise out of this terrain. The Coachella Valley has always run on that tension. This is simply the newest version of it.
Two clubs, two entirely different propositions
The Valley is not getting one surf destination. It has two, and they are not interchangeable.
Palm Springs Surf Club is Palm Springs. Waves, yes, but also a resort pool, a lazy river, water slides, cabanas, dining and events. You can book an advanced session or sit beside the water and never touch a board. Instead of paddling toward the Pacific horizon, surfers look at the San Jacinto Mountains. It is not trying to imitate a beach town, which is exactly why it works. Surf culture translated into Palm Springs.
DSRT Surf is a purpose built destination. The wave is the beginning rather than the whole of it: a three pool viewing deck with cabanas, a restaurant and bar, a skate park, yoga, pickleball, and access to two championship Desert Willow courses. A later phase adds a 139 key hotel and 57 private villas.
Before opening, it was tested by Rob Machado, Taylor Knox, Damien Hobgood, Josh Kerr, Kolohe Andino, Dane Reynolds and the Colapinto brothers. Jacob Szekely, who has ridden most of them, called it the best wave pool in the world.
Palm Springs Surf Club is somewhere you go for an afternoon. DSRT Surf is being built as somewhere you fly to.
The question everyone asks first
A surf lagoon in a drought prone desert invites one obvious objection, and the numbers are better than most people expect.
DSRT Surf replaced 71 acres of golf turf with drought resistant desert planting under a programme it calls Turf for Surf. It draws from its own well more than 200 metres deep rather than the public supply, and runs as a closed circuit. Its stated annual water consumption is equivalent to roughly 1.3 holes of a standard golf course.
A wave lagoon that uses less water than two golf holes, in a valley with more than 100 courses.
The groundwater arrives at around 75 degrees, which means the lagoon holds a comfortable temperature without much help. During a July test session the air read in the 110s and the water sat at 84, well after dark.
The ocean does not care about your itinerary
Swell changes. Wind changes. Tides change. Crowds change. A traveller can cross the world to a famous break and find nothing worth paddling for.
An engineered wave removes that variable entirely, and predictability turns out to be the product.
Picture the people it serves. A surf coach flying athletes in for a week of training on a wave that repeats exactly, which no ocean will give them. A family from London where one teenager surfs and nobody else does, building a California trip that works for all five of them. A thirty year old from Sydney who has never considered the desert, and a sixty five year old golfer from Chicago who has come here every winter for two decades, ending up at the same table on El Paseo that evening.
That is how destinations become more interesting.
Not by replacing the audience they had, but by acquiring one they never expected.
Could Palm Desert land on an international surf list?
A year ago the question would have been absurd. It is now worth asking seriously.
Consider what already exists. Palm Springs has an international airport. The region has a substantial luxury hotel market. Millions of visitors already understand Greater Palm Springs as somewhere worth travelling to for an experience rather than a location. And the Valley has spent seventy years proving it can build a global reputation around things that should not exist here: championship golf in an arid basin, international tennis at Indian Wells, modernist architecture that draws pilgrims, one of the world’s most recognisable music festivals in Indio.
Surfing does not have to build the destination from scratch. It joins one that already works.
And when the session ends, you are still in the Coachella Valley. Dinner on El Paseo. Golf the next morning. An afternoon among midcentury houses in Palm Springs. A concert at Acrisure Arena. Joshua Tree an hour away. A performance circuit at The Thermal Club. A palm oasis you can walk into.
The desert does not need to compete with Hawaii or Australia for ocean surfing. It can offer something no coastline can: surfing as one part of a desert week.
What this gives Palm Desert
Palm Springs has modernism. Indian Wells has tennis. La Quinta has golf and its village. Palm Desert has always had a bit of everything and no single shorthand.
A major surf destination gives it one. An experience people may travel specifically to Palm Desert to have.
Not because homeowners are about to take up surfing. Most will not. But because a first trip made for a surf weekend becomes a second trip, then a month long rental, then someone wondering what it would cost to own something here. That progression has run in destination markets forever, and the reason people first come is rarely the reason they eventually stay.
One honest note on property
It is too early to say what proximity to a surf destination does to value, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing.
Golf frontage carries decades of transaction evidence behind it. Surf adjacency in this Valley has none, because no property has yet traded twice on it.
What can be said is that destination amenities widen the audience for a place, and a wider audience is generally good for a market over time. That is a slower and less exciting claim than the one you will hear from anyone selling nearby. It is the one we would stand behind.
Frequently asked questions
When does DSRT Surf open and where is it?
Summer 2026, in Palm Desert within the Desert Willow Golf Resort area. The lagoon covers approximately 5.5 acres and DSRT Surf describes it as the largest Wavegarden Cove in North America. Opening dates on projects of this scale move, so confirm directly before planning around it.
Is Palm Springs Surf Club open?
Yes, and it has been since 2024. Alongside the waves it runs a resort pool, lazy river, water slides, cabanas, dining and events, so it works as a day out whether or not you get on a board. Its waterpark is open for the 2026 season.
Why would anyone fly to the desert to surf?
Because the ocean does not care about your itinerary. Swell, wind, tide and crowds all change, and a traveller can cross the world to a famous break and find nothing worth paddling for. An engineered wave removes that variable entirely. For a surf coach with athletes to train, a family where one person surfs, or anyone who wants surfing to be part of a trip rather than the whole of it, predictability is the product.
Does this affect Palm Desert property values?
Too early to say, and anyone claiming otherwise is guessing. Golf frontage carries decades of transaction evidence. Surf adjacency in this Valley has none, because no property has yet traded twice on it. What can be said is that destination amenities widen the audience for a place, and a wider audience is generally good for a market over time.
If you are watching this
Cailin McLennan handles the Valley’s passion property markets: equestrian, polo, motorsport and now surf. Property organised around an experience rather than a floor plan needs a different set of questions, and she came to real estate from global hospitality for Formula 1, which is where she learned them.
Last updated: August 10, 2026
Written by Cailin McLennan, The McLennan Team at Desert Sotheby’s International Realty
California DRE #02121998
Opening dates, facilities and operating details are set by the respective operators, are subject to change without notice, and are not guaranteed by The McLennan Team or Desert Sotheby’s International Realty. Verify current status directly before planning around any of it.