Clark’s Travel Center

This roadside pit stop is where Reverend Jimmy Swaggart picked up a lady of the night before being promptly pulled over by the police on October 11, 1991. The scandal (Swaggart’s second such offense) led to the temporary shut-down of the televangelist’s ministry and a massive media blitz, which then Indio Police Chief Jerry Graves told “The Desert Sun” garnered “the most intense interest in a news story that I’ve been involved in.” In an only-in-the-desert twist, a bronze plaque now marks where the incident occurred, quite fittingly displayed just outside of the travel center’s restrooms.