From the Desert Sun
“Along the 14th fairway of Palm Springs’ Tahquitz Creek Golf Course stands a long row of tamarisk trees, a 50-foot-tall wall of dense foliage seen nowhere else on the course. This species of tree, which guzzles water and leaves large deposits of salt, is so invasive that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has categorized it as a pest.
But residents living for decades on the other side of this thicket, in the Lawrence Crossley neighborhood, see the tamarisks as something far worse than a horticultural nuisance. They see the trees as an enduring symbol of racism and inequality – and they want them removed by the city of Palm Springs, which owns the golf course.
The tamarisks were originally planted in the early 1960s, as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum around the country, to block off the historically black neighborhood from the affluent white patrons of the golf course on the other side.”
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