Bill Gates's House

Microsoft’s co-founder. He started the company with Paul Allen in 1975, ran it until 2000, and has spent the years since on the philanthropic foundation he endowed with Melinda French Gates.

The house went up in 1993, 6 years before Gates bought it. Riverside County’s assessor classes it as a post-1990 modern residence of 1 story under a tile or slate roof.

Riverside County’s parcel record names 3 earlier assessor parcels as the parents of today’s lot, a little over an acre the county flags as fairway frontage, not waterfront.

Colorado River water did not reach this valley until the Coachella Canal opened in 1949. Before that, growers irrigated from wells that pulled the aquifer down year after year.

Gates has owned the place since 1999, when the house was 6 years old. Robb Report Australia describes a swimming pool here cut in the shape of a guitar, set in a sweep of lawn.

In May 2021, Page Six reported that Gates had been staying at the desert house for about 3 months before he and Melinda French Gates announced their divorce. Fox Business carried the account.

Indian Wells took its name from a Cahuilla water hole. After gold turned up on the Colorado River in 1863, the well watered Bradshaw Trail stage traffic; the town incorporated in 1967 as California’s 400th city.