If you've walked the corner of Racquet Club Drive and Leonard Street in the past year, you may have noticed the stack of concrete disks rising out of the open lot there and kept walking, because there's nothing telling you what it is or why it's there. That's not an oversight you imagined. In February, the Palm Springs Public Art Commission opened a meeting by admitting the same thing: no marked path to the piece, no signage, and a QR code on site that no longer connects to anything.
The sculpture sits inside Crescendo, one of two parcels of open space that Little Tuscany spent roughly two decades fighting to keep undeveloped. The land itself is now protected. The art the city installed on it is still catching up.
Two Parcels the City Almost Built On
Crescendo and Boulders are 42 and 31 acres of Chino Canyon's alluvial fan, the rock-strewn slope between West Racquet Club Road and Tramway Road that gives Little Tuscany its elevation and its boulders. Both parcels were previously owned by Grit Development, formerly Wessman Development, which planned to build housing on them, and they were conveyed to the city as part of the settlement of a lawsuit. For about 20 years, the question of what would go on that land sat unresolved, and the answer on the table for most of that time was housing density that neighbors, led by longtime resident Tim O'Bayley, spent years pushing back against.
The resolution came in stages. In September 2024, the Planning Commission recommended exploring an open space designation, with Commissioner Robert Rotman noting there was already broad public support to leave the land alone. By January 2025, the City Council had adopted an updated General Plan that designated both Boulders and Crescendo as open space in perpetuity, a decision Councilmember Jeffrey Bernstein and Planning Director Chris Hadwin helped push through. To satisfy the state's housing element requirements without a net loss of buildable units, the city shifted that density to a parcel on Gene Autry Trail north of Mission Drive instead. You can read the full account of that vote and what it changed through the Palm Springs Post's coverage.
What that means day to day is simple: the two lots that could have become another dense development on the hillside are now legally locked as open space, the same status as the canyon itself.
A Neighborhood Named for a Trip to Italy
Little Tuscany's street grid still carries the fingerprints of the deal that built it. In 1934, Palm Springs builder Alvah Hicks came back from a trip to Italy convinced that the region's boulder-strewn terrain could support the same kind of stone construction he'd seen in Tuscany. He built seven Tuscany-inspired homes into the hillside outcroppings, and named the streets around them accordingly.
- Palermo
- Girasol, Italian for sunflower
- Tuscan
- Via Olivera
- Cardillo, Sicilian rather than Spanish, unlike most Palm Springs street names
Original development plans from the 1940s referred to the area as Piemonte Estates before Little Tuscany stuck. Today the neighborhood holds more than 700 households and a run of architecturally significant homes, including Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House and work by Craig Ellwood, both frequently cited as reasons Little Tuscany draws attention during Modernism Week tours.
None of that history explains the trail underneath it, though. That part predates the houses by decades.
The Trail Hollywood Used to Maintain
The Chino Canyon Trail, which now runs through Desert Palisades, Crescendo, and Boulders, has been maintained since 1931 by the Desert Riders Equestrian Club, a group whose membership once included Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Carl Lykken, Charlie Farrell, Henry Fonda, and Cary Grant. Long before Little Tuscany had a name, this trail had a maintenance crew, and it happened to be some of the most famous people in the country clearing debris so hikers and riders could get through.
The sculpture at Racquet Club and Leonard sits inside that same trail corridor, on land those same club members would have crossed on horseback.
Where the Neighborhood Story and the City's Story Split
The Little Tuscany Neighborhood Organization's own description of the site points visitors toward "a quiet little path" leading to the artwork. The city's Public Art Commission, meeting on February 5, 2026, described something less finished. Commissioners discussed the piece's location on Racquet Club Road and noted it was isolated, lacked a marked path and wayfinding signage, and that its on-site QR code no longer resolved to the artist's explanation of the work, according to reporting on the meeting. Commissioners also said the isolation was part of the piece's appeal, even as they voted to add it to the maintenance schedule and fund its upkeep out of the miscellaneous maintenance budget.
Next steps on the city's side include reaching out to the artist about restoring the online explanation or adding a traditional sign, and evaluating whether path markers, guide signage, or even a bench would help without requiring a full parks and public works project. None of that has happened yet. For now, the neighborhood's informal sense of a walkable path and the city's formal acknowledgment that there isn't one are simply both true at the same time.
What You're Actually Looking At
The piece is titled Fossils of the Future, made by Tyler Burton, an artist based in the Coachella Valley and Los Angeles who has installed versions of this series in Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and Newport Beach. The series works in stacked concrete disks built to resemble core samples pulled from the earth, embedded with everyday plastic objects, an idea meant to read as a kind of future archaeology of the things people throw away. The city purchased this particular installation for its permanent collection, placing it inside Crescendo at the Racquet Club and Leonard corner specifically.
Finding it right now takes a little more attention than most public art does. There's no sign pointing you to it from the road, and the QR code that would normally explain what you're looking at won't load anything. What you get instead is the sculpture on its own, standing in open desert scrub with the canyon rising behind it, exactly as isolated as the commission described.
Walking It This Fall
Late September is close to ideal for this kind of walk. The heat that makes the alluvial fan brutal in July has broken, and the same open sightlines that make Crescendo feel exposed in summer make it worth crossing on foot once the temperature drops. You're walking land that was almost built out twice, saved by a neighbor who spent 20 years on it, sitting under a trail that Cary Grant once helped keep clear, holding a sculpture the city itself says it hasn't finished setting up yet.
That combination, protected land, unfinished amenity, real history underneath both, is not something you'll find summarized on a real estate listing page. It's the kind of detail that only shows up if you've actually walked the corner and wondered why nothing was there to explain it.
If you're heading out to find it yourself, go before the city adds that bench. Right now it's still just you, the concrete, and the canyon.
Sarah and James Pearce spend as much time walking Palm Springs neighborhoods as researching them, and they're always glad to talk through what's changing in Little Tuscany, on the trail or off it. Reach out to Sarah & James Pearce any time you want a local's read on what's happening in the hills above Racquet Club Road.
