This article explores the history and popularity of Shields Date Garden, a renowned roadside attraction in Southern California. It highlights the garden's unique offerings, including its patented date varieties, date crystals, and signature date shakes, while emphasizing the experience of enjoying these sweet treats amidst the barren desert landscape.
Of the many roadside attractions I’ve been to known to pull over for, nothing compares to “The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.” The signs for this scandalous film first show up miles away, on Highway 111 in the bleached-out High Desert of Southern California, outside of Palm Springs. They beckon tourists to slow down even before the giant wooden knight appears, pointing visitors to the Shields Date Garden parking lot in Indio.
Date shakes have become something of an unofficial drink of the Coachella Valley, appearing on menus at hotels, restaurants, and other date shops along the road. At Shields, the thick, creamy milkshakes are made using date crystals, another one of Shields’ patented inventions, which are essentially nubbins of dried dates sweetened with date sugar. For the shakes, the crystals are mixed with water to make a thick date paste, which is blended with vanilla ice cream and milk.
Today, the 15-minute doc plays on a continuous loop in the in-house"Romance Theater," though a few years ago it was turned into a short film that combines the original slideshow with Shields' narration and new footage and audio. The film is For many, the desert holds a mysterious allure. For me, it’s a reminder of the awesome power of nature to still overrule the will of man. But how delightful it is that our tiny toehold into taming the wild landscape should come in the form of date farms, and how sweet it is to take a bit of them with you in a Styrofoam cup.
Samples are abundant and you can buy all kinds of dates, along with the usual touristy chazerai, but in this writer’s opinion, the best souvenir from Shields is one that shouldn’t leave the parking lot: a date shake. Tourism in the area took off, as people drove out to the desert for the three-day, Arabian Nights-themed “International Festival of Dates,” complete with camel races. Floyd and Bess needed something to make their date farm stand out from the dozens of others lining the highway. So Floyd, who had trained as an engineer but proved naturally adept at date farming, began giving lectures in his back garden to describe the painstaking process of date cultivation.
Roadside Attractions Date Shakes Coachella Valley Shields Date Garden Desert Tourism
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