Andrea McKenna • July 13, 2026
Lost Acreage Brought Gale Gordon To Desert | Historic Borrego Sun
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From the Borrego Sun archives
Gale Gordon was best known for his longtime work with Lucille Ball on The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy. He also appeared in I Love Lucy, Our Miss Brooks and Dennis the Menace.
Gordon later made Borrego Springs his home, living on a Tub Canyon ranch and serving as honorary mayor. This 1969 article tells how a search for land purchased by his mother led him to the desert.
------- Originally published in the Borrego Sun on June 21, 1969.
HE FOUND PEACE
Lost Acreage Brought Gale Gordon To Desert
It’s not difficult to find a reason for moving to Borrego Springs.
But for actor Gale Gordon it was even less difficult.
He came to Borrego 40 years ago to find 10 lost acres his mother, English actress Gloria Gordon, had purchased for speculation, but no one knew where they were.
Gale, today the honorary mayor of Borrego Springs, couldn’t find them, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, and in subsequent trips he fell in love with the desert.
“When I bought Tub Canyon,” he told the Times writer, Cecil Smith, “I brought an expert surveyor down to check my property lines, and while he was here I sent him to look for Mother’s land. He couldn’t find it.
“Just a few years ago, a man wrote me asking me if he could have an easement for a road over Mother’s 10 acres to his property. I told him I’d give him the easement if he’d show it to me. Now, at last, I know where it is.”
In the Times article, Smith wrote:
“Some people are frightened by the desert. The solitude disturbs them. Across the mountains at Palm Springs there is glitter and clamor and neon dazzle where tourists and movie stars gambol.
“Though show folk own great tracts of Borrego (among them Bing Crosby, Jascha Heifetz, Chuck Connors, Eddie Albert and Margo), there is here quiet, muted peace.”
Gale obviously agrees, in his words:
“When I get in my car to come here I can feel the tensions slacken, the muscles relax. By the time I’m here, I’m a different man and Hollywood seems light-years away. The desert is like the sea, an ever-changing thing that never changes. I guess I come here to find my soul."
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These documents are part of the Borrego Sun materials acquired by Ram Media Foundation. The Borrego Sun archives are being preserved and digitized by the San Diego History Center, ensuring that decades of Borrego Springs history will be preserved for future generations.
To support the future of local media and preserve the past, please contact Andrea at
andrea@rammediafoundation.org
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