Ten miles from the nearest modern town, twenty miles up a canyon trail that follows a stream through cottonwood groves and past prehistoric pottery fragments, there is a stone cabin. Jack Miller built it around 1930 using river rock pressed into cement forms while they were still wet, so the outside stones became part of the wall structure. He built a forge. He built a hornito — an earthen oven. He built a road. The road washed out in a flood in 1976 and was never rebuilt. The cabin is still there.
The Martinez Canyon Rockhouse is a study in self-sufficient construction. The walls are thirteen cement lifts, each four inches by eight inches, with small river rocks pressed into the exterior faces while the concrete dried — ornamental, but also structural. At the ceiling line, true two-by-four beams brace the walls, and eleven more run north-south across the ceiling span, supporting tongue-and-groove planks covered in tar paper and galvanized tin. The floor was poured in segments over footings that may be lumber, rock, or concrete — no one has ever been able to check, because there is no view of the underside. The cabin has two rooms, six wooden-framed windows, and two fireplaces: a river rock fireplace on the north wall of the main room and a smaller one in the kitchen.
The garden behind and east of the cabin has given up more than Miller's era left behind. Throughout the soil, archaeologists found chipped stone debitage — waste flakes from tool-making — and fragments of Tizon Brown pottery, a ceramic type associated with the late prehistoric period in the region. A granitic bedrock outcrop nearby holds a metate, a grinding stone worn smooth by generations of use. A test probe in the garden revealed intact subsurface deposits about ten centimeters deep. The Cahuilla people used these canyons for centuries before Jack Miller arrived; his cabin sits on ground that had already been occupied in ways more durable than the structures he left behind.
Jack Miller built a road up Martinez Canyon. Flooding in 1976 destroyed it, and since then access has been exclusively by foot. The trailhead starts at Van Buren and 68th Avenue, descending into the canyon and following the stream for roughly ten miles in — twenty miles round trip for the full journey to the cabin. The Martinez Canyon stream usually runs year-round, supporting the cottonwood groves that give the lower canyon its character. Hikers who make the full trip to the rockhouse find two beds still inside and a paper sheet where they can add their names to the list of everyone else who came this far. The cabin is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is in excellent condition, largely because almost nobody gets there.
The Martinez Canyon Rockhouse is located deep within the Santa Rosa Mountains Wilderness at approximately 33.51°N, 116.33°W, well south of Palm Desert and accessible only on foot via a 20-mile trail. The canyon is not visually identifiable from normal flight altitudes due to the dense mountain terrain. The Santa Rosa Mountains ridgeline is visible as the southwestern wall of the Coachella Valley. Nearest airports: Bermuda Dunes (UDD, approximately 15 miles north-northeast), Palm Springs International (KPSP, approximately 22 miles north). The wilderness area below has no roads, structures, or aviation facilities; the cabin itself is too small to be visible from altitude.