Interesting. This piqued my curiosity because I’ve seen checkboard lands in Oregon. I remember being told that it had to do with BLM by my family. So I looked it up. Basically the government gave the railroads a land grant in a checkboard pattern as an incentive to create railways. Eventually in this case, the Agua Caliente Reservation inherited this checkboard shape. A book was written about them and the development of Palm Springs called Golden Checkerboard.

Just a hunch, but maybe it has someting to do with no roads in those mountains. The satellite pictures look like very rugged terrain there.
…or…
That’s where they store the alien bodies after the flying saucer crashes - an “area 51″ overflow parking, as it were..

I found a page that further explains why so many clearcuts are in a checkerboard pattern.

Perhaps this is land that has been incorporated into the city of Palm Springs. If you look at other cites that are not in populated areas, you will see the two different shades of gray.

For example, this is my hometown and the darker gray does in fact show what land has been incorporated in the city limits.

Continuation of the block pattern that the main streets (yellow) of Palm Springs follow? Perhaps from districting that was put together in the distant past and never followed through on in that direction due to the mountains?

I have a condo at the corner of S Palo Fiero and LaVerne, just south of E Palm Canyon that you see on the map. The mountains start about 2 blocks away from my condo which is where the checkerboard pattern starts. there’s NOTHING there that would have that pattern. It’s Mountains - there couldn’t be anything there in squares. I suspect it’s either a lack of data or something similar.