Barbara Worth Hotel: The Heart of Imperial Valley

For decades the Barbara Worth Hotel was the center of community life in the Imperial Valley. Named for the fictional heroine of Harold Bell Wright's nineteen eleven novel about reclaiming the desert through irrigation, the hotel in El Centro hosted hundreds of social events, civic meetings, and celebrations that marked the rhythms of a farming community built on the Colorado River water that made the Sonoran Desert bloom. Traveling salesmen, ranchers, politicians, and tourists all passed through its lobby.

The hotel stood until a fire destroyed it in the nineteen sixties, ending decades of service as the valley's living room. The site is remembered now by a marker, a placeholder for everything that burned.