With the postal service in the news, we thought we’d bring you another “Historical Highlight.” This installment focuses on a curious detail of Twentynine Palms history and how the city settled on its unique name. Reporter Heather Clisby takes us back to the day when Twentynine Palms lost its hyphen…
In 1855, Colonel Henry Washington was assigned to explore this area for the creation of government maps. At the Oasis of Mara, the colonel noted exactly 29 Washingtonia palms, (named for George Washington) and the name “Twenty-Nine Palms” stuck through the mining boom and up to the homesteading era that roughly began in 1920.
As the population grew, so did its need for mail service. Seems the “29 Palms” address confused mail clerks and complicated delivery. Letters were often mistakenly addressed “Box 29, Palms, California” or mail was erroneously delivered to other towns that included the word “palms” in the name.
The brand new Chamber of Commerce then came forward with an idea to spell out the numbers to read “Twenty-Nine Palms.” Then around 1938, the Postmaster General James Farley informed local postmaster Benjamin Steeg that the USPS would not recognize a town with three names. When the new streamlined name was announced, The Desert Trail published an editorial on June 24, 1938, acknowledging the changes and promised to drop the hyphen and lower case the ‘n’ though the town still uses the original version, 29 Palms, for tourism promotion.
