Thermal is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Riverside County, California, occupying a stretch of the lower Coachella Valley about twenty-five miles southeast of Palm Springs and roughly nine miles north of the Salton Sea. The community lies about 138 feet below sea level, in the broad, hot basin that also holds the Salton Sea and the Imperial Valley's farmlands. The community dates to about 1910, when it was established as a railroad camp for the Southern Pacific. Rail access helped open the eastern Coachella Valley to agriculture, and Thermal grew around that industry. Date palms, table grapes, citrus, and other desert crops remain the defining features of the landscape, supported by irrigation from the Colorado River and the region's year-round growing season. Agriculture has also made Thermal home to a substantial farmworker population and a network of related businesses. Thermal's other defining institution is the Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport, a county-owned public-use airfield named in 2004 for the pioneering aviator who lived in the region. The airport serves general aviation, flight training, and some commercial activity, and it positions Thermal as a secondary aviation gateway to the Desert Resorts region. The community itself is small — about 2,700 residents at the 2020 census — and predominantly rural, with no incorporated government of its own. Residents rely on nearby Coachella, Indio, and Mecca for schools, shopping, and services, and children attend the Coachella Valley Unified School District. Thermal offers a quiet, agricultural, deeply desert way of life, suited to those who work the valley's farms or aviation businesses and who value space and solitude over resort-town bustle.