“Nobody ever acknowledged he was gay and to find the facts, and to prove these facts I think is important,” Gray said. He was later 'arrested and imprisoned for 'sexual perversion' having orally copulated with teenage boys,' according to the Palm Springs Historical Society.įollowing his prison release, Pester said Palm Springs was becoming overdeveloped and wanted to buy a boat and sail away to a low-populated island, but opted to settle in Arizona and died in 1963. Pester was known as “the hermit of Palm Springs.” According to previous reporting, he was known for camping out in Palm Canyon and practicing a natural lifestyle and becoming a well-known fixture in town, with tourists and celebrities seeking him out. As Palm Springs became a resort town in the early 1900s, Gray said the first person to be considered LGBTQ moved to Palm Springs, adding “the word ‘homosexual’ existed, but people didn’t use it that much.” That man was William Pester, who left Germany in 1906 for the United States, spending time in Hawaii before arriving in Palm Springs in 1916.
