Borrego Springs Resort (Closed)

Borrego Springs Resort sat at the edge of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, one of the largest state parks in the continental United States, where the Sonoran Desert meets the Santa Rosa Mountains in a landscape of ocotillo, ironwood, and bighorn sheep. The Coachella Valley's more famous resort corridor lies an hour's drive northwest, but Borrego Springs occupied its own remote world — a small, unincorporated community that drew stargazers, wildflower chasers, and desert devotees willing to leave the crowds behind. Playing golf out here meant playing in genuine isolation, with panoramic mountain backdrops and daytime temperatures that could push well past 100 degrees in summer.

The course is now closed, joining a short list of desert layouts that couldn't sustain the economics of water, maintenance, and thin visitation in one of California's more remote pockets.

What remains is the setting itself — spectacular and unchanged. Borrego Springs still draws visitors for its dark-sky designation and its famous spring superbloom, a landscape that once framed 18 holes of high-desert golf.