Sunnylands: Where Movie Stars And Presidents Play (And Work)
President Obama arrives in Palm Springs, Calif., on Friday to spend two days with China's new president, Xi Jinping, at a 200-acre estate called Sunnylands.
The house at Sunnylands is built of lava stone. The private golf course includes a pink pagoda. And if the presidents feel like fishing in one of the property's 11 lakes, they will hardly be the first world leaders to dip a line in the water.
Obama is the eighth president to visit Sunnylands. The first was Dwight Eisenhower, in 1966. He went to see his friends Walter and Leonore Annenberg, wealthy publishers and philanthropists who had built the estate as their winter home.
The center's current director, Janice Lyle, says Eisenhower looked quizzically at his friend. "You're right by Palm Springs," Eisenhower said, "but you don't have any palm trees."
"And so the next week, Walter Annenberg made certain that two palm trees were planted on the property," Lyle says. "They're currently called the Eisenhower Palms. They're almost 50 years old, and they tower over everything else here."
Obama will see those palm trees when he arrives Friday. He may also see an inscription in the guestbook from Richard Nixon. Shortly after the president resigned in disgrace, Nixon visited Sunnylands and wrote, "When you're down, you find out who your real friends are."
The most frequent presidential visitor by far was Ronald Reagan. He was friends with the Annenbergs when he was an actor in Hollywood. Reagan attended New Year's Eve at Sunnylands 18 times — many of them with Secretary of State George Shultz.
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