Salton Sea

On a recent post a couple of y’all mentioned there was a ghost town near Salton Sea and I was like “whaaaaaa??”...as I think ghost towns are super creepy and awesome.

As it turns out, the entire Salton Sea is a essentially a “ghost town”...I’m a little embarrassed to say I lived nearby for so long and never knew or more importantly, CHECKED IT OUT. 😕

So it seems to have been created by accident sometime in the 1900’s, when the Colorado River was manipulated in order to provide some more irrigation to the Salton Basin area. It ended up flooding for a couple years in a row before they ultimately decided it was a terrible idea, and rerouted the river back to its original form. In its wake, it left the 15 x 35 mile wide lake that we know today as the Salton Sea. In the 50’s and 60’s, it became a super popular resort community...a “Palm Springs on the Lake” sort of situation.

It seems that tourism in the area thrived for about 20-30 years, but sometime in the 1980’s, the lake became uninhabitable for fish, birds, and other wildlife, and there was a pretty out-of-control die off. The runoff of chemicals and pesticides became more and more concentrated, and since there was nowhere for the water to flow, the salinity crept higher & higher (it is currently 25% higher than ocean water). Between its increasing toxicity and decomposing marine life on the shores, it’s easy to see why the tourism slowed down a bit. It is considered one of the biggest environmental disasters in the history of California.

Anyways...I hope we get a chance to explore some of the nearby abandoned villages in our travels someday...this was all really fascinating to learn about. Sharing some pics I found online of the awkwardly beautiful landscape...though I wish they were, these shots are definitely not mine.

This concludes my essay on the Salton Sea apparently...thanks for reading, y’all!