Unusual Photos Showcasing The Surreal Landscape And History Of The Salton Sea
California’s Salton Sea is seemingly a place of contradictions. It’s a lake that humans accidentally created, but also the site of an ancient waterway. It was a fisherman’s paradise that no longer has fish. It was a playground for the rich and famous that’s now inhabited by those on the margins of society.
However you parse it, the Salton Sea is a fascinating piece of California’s history. Let’s delve into its complicated history.
The lake existed at various points in history.
Located in modern-day Riverside and Imperial counties in California, the basin of the Salton Sea has alternately been a river, lake, and dry lakebed over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
It last dried up in about 1850. But in 1905, an irrigation canal dug from the Colorado River got out of hand due to spring floods, and the entire Salton Basin was flooded over the course of two years.
This time, the lake didn’t dry up.
Because the lake was now connected to irrigation systems, it was continually fed in the early years of the 20th century.
Agriculture in the 1920s boomed, which led to the lake water continually being replenished by flood irrigation. Migratory birds flocked to the area, and a wildlife refuge was established in 1930.
Intermittent flooding finally stopped in 1938.
With the construction of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in 1938, the excess irrigation water that otherwise would have flowed into the Salton Sea was cut off.
This doesn’t mean that the lake dried up, however. It was still deep, full of fish, and was an increasingly popular tourist destination.
It became a hotspot for celebrities.
Midcentury celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Janet Leigh (seen here) made the Salton Sea — just a couple of hours from Los Angeles — their summertime playground.
The Salton Sea’s heyday took place in the 1950s and into the ’60s, an era in which yacht clubs, hotels, and nightclubs were established. The community of Bombay Beach sprung up during this time.
It was also a sportsman’s paradise.
Along with the boating and vacatioining, fishing was a major activity on the Salton Sea. The fish population from the original flooding persisted, and fish were continually restocked into the lake.
At its peak, around 1.5 million visitors flocked to the Salton Sea every year.
It started to decline in the 1970s.
The decline was predictable, and had been a long time coming. The lake had no rivers or canals feeding it, no outlet, and was located in a barren, salty basin.
Adding to the problem was the fact that decades of agricultural runoff had started to poison the lake. By the 1970s, the lake was evaporating, heavily salty, and experiencing loss of wildlife.
It was an ecological nightmare.
Conditions continually worsened, and by the 1980s, the Salton Sea’s glory days were firmly in the past. The area no longer attracted visitors, and structures were left to rot away.
Remediation efforts to save the lake were underway, but it was a problem that was seemingly too big to fix.
The knock-on effects were significant.
Because the lake was drying up and getting smaller, more and more of the salty, increasingly toxic lakebed became exposed.
This caused toxic dust to be released into the air, exposing nearby residents to a noxious dust of exhaust fumes, pesticide plumes, and factory emissions.
It was barely habitable.
While the buildings along the shore of the Salton Sea were scarcely a few decades old, the salinity of the lake and dry desert air did a number on the metal structures.
Cars and buildings became rusting wrecks extremely quickly under these conditions.
Despite the challenges, a community persists.
Bombay Beach’s glory days are long in the past, but this 2019 photo from the Ski Inn bar shows that the area still has residents.
In fact, the Salton Sea region experienced somewhat of a cultural renaissance, with its unusual history and virtual abandonment being seen as a draw.
It’s a destination for quirky art.
The communities that still exist along the Salton Sea are some of the poorest in California. But because the area is lightly policed and undesirable for developers, it’s flourished as a kind of hippie compound.
After the golden era of the Salton Sea died down, its second act got underway.
An early resident created Salvation Mountain.
Leonard Knight, one of the counterculture types who was the first to come into the area following its golden age, created this unusual art installation, which is known as Salvation Mountain.
Salvation Mountain was shown in the film Into the Wild and was continually added to for most of Knight’s life, until his death in 2014.
The climate is a mixed bag.
The communities of the Salton Sea, namely Bombay Beach and Slab City, are a popular spot for hikers, campers, and RV vacationers looking to escape the winter chill.
While the desert heat is appreciated during the winter months, temperatures get borderline unbearable in the summer, with a mean daily maximum of 107 °F in July.
East Jesus is another attraction.
This art installation started out as a simple structure garden surrounding a pair of cars, but expanded into something much bigger.
It’s more of an art garden than a singular art installation, with not just art pieces, but also live events and performance art. It’s the de facto cultural center of Slab City.
Those living in Slab City are truly off the grid.
The community takes its name from the concrete slabs in the area that were left over from an old World War II training camp.
The area has a year-round permanent population, but this surges with temporary residents during the winter months. At times, there are hundreds of RVs on site.
Most residents use generators or solar panels.
Slab City is not officially a town and as such is not serviced by any utilities. Cost of living is low, but residents have to provide their own water and energy.
Clean water comes from a tank at a community church, while electricity comes from generators and solar panels. The closest law enforcement agency, and the closest stores, can be found in Niland — about four miles away.
It’s become a tourist destination.
Despite the odds, a dedicated community exists along the shores of the Salton Sea. Visitors can find an internet cafe, hostel, skate park, church, and library.
Live events are frequent as well, and many nights there will be some type of concert or performance art taking place.
It remains an ecological disaster.
The continued human presence at the Salton Sea is a fascinating chapter in its history, but this community-building does nothing for the underlying ecological problems in the area.
Salinity in the lake itself is greater than that of the Pacific Ocean, and frequent fluctuations in the water level mean that the lake’s chemical content is volatile and unpredictable.
Wildlife no longer flocks there.
The aforementioned issues ensured that the lake lost most of its fish decades ago, leaving behind a putrid smell that’s ever-present.
Despite the absence of fish, the lake continued to be a spot for migratory birds to gather, thanks to wetlands along the shore. But as the lake and the wetlands shrunk, the bird population also declined.
Various management programs are in place.
After years of proposals, the California Natural Resources Agency announced in 2020 that they’d commit to suppressing dust in the area, along with building ponds and wetlands along the Salton Sea’s shores.
In time, this work should make the lake habitable for fish and other aquatic life, with more than $320 million committed to the project.
