18 Mar 2019 - Salton Sea and Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge

18 Mar 2019

Today we drove about an hour north of El Centro to a huge body of water called the Salton Sea. It has quite a history, to say the least!! I can't believe we had not heard about this before.   Let me try to set the stage for this:

The Salton Sea came into being in 1905. It was an accident stemming from a canal breach that diverted water from the Colorado River to the agricultural area of the Imperial Valley.  The water overflowed and changed course, creating a massive inland lake (sea).   A year later waterfowl and other birds came to the area.  Fish were introduced into the lake and by 1920 it was a full fledged tourist area.  Keep in mind this whole thing was totally by accident, but it was very successful..... for a while.

The area surrounding the sea was agricultural and continued to be farmed.  They pumped water out of the lake to water the fields and the water ran back into the lake along with dissolved salts from the soils, DDT and other chemicals - all back into the lake.  

The popularity of the area continued to grow as did the lake until the breach that originally created the sea was repaired by the railroad.  Now the lake stopped growing and they had a body of water - a lake, with no outlet and the only inflow was the water runoff from irrigating the fields.  The Beachboys came.  High rollers from Palm Springs came, etc.  At the same time around 1950 the lake was drawing more tourists per year than Yosemite Park, but the salinity of the lake continued to grow also.  Salt water fish were introduced as the salinity of the water would no longer support fresh water fish.  By the 1960's there were cities growing, land development, marina's, yacht clubs, etc.  At the same time agriculture continued to grow which made matters even worse for the health of the lake.

My the last 80's, California Fish and Game was telling everyone not to eat the fish caught from the lake because of the water toxicity.  Algae 'blooms' occurred, creating massive fish kills.  The whole area stunk like rotten eggs, and the lake death spiral was on it's way.  

  There are whole areas now that have been developed with water, sewer and electric, but no one to move in and build.  Abandoned buildings everywhere, and a huge lake, the Salton Sea that is worthless and shrinking every day.  Amazing!!    We watched a couple You Tube videos about Salton Sea which were interesting:  Salton Sea

So we drove up to the Salton Sea.  I just had to 'sea' it LOL!  The drive up was through agricultural areas, as explained above. 

Irrigation ditched everywhere

Hundreds of thousands bales of hay.

They grow lettuce, onions; thousands of acres of hay; sugar beets, broccoli and many more vegetables.  We passed an incognito cell tower that was disguised as a palm tree!

We fueled and paid the highest price of our trip for diesel.

As we made our way to the Salton Sea we passed through a small town called Westmoreland.  Doreen pointed out a sign for a 'Date Shake', made from dates.  Apparently they are very popular down here and we will try one before leaving.

Before long we were winding our way behind some geothermal power plants, where they drill deep into the earth and harvest the pent up steam to create power. 

A drilling rig for a new well.

Behind the power plants was our first exposure to the Salton Sea.  Wow, it is big.  It is so amazing they could not fix the issues that caused the sea to fail.

Nasty water and concrete piers from who knows what.

Brown, nasty water.  No fish in sight, but an occasional bird.

Our next stop was the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, named after musician and comedian Sonny Bono from 'Sonny and Cher' fame. It was established in 1930 and is located 228 feet below sea level.  

After the wildlife habitat we headed up to Bombay Beach. This was once a thriving tourist destination on the lake, is now described as post-apocalyptic. "Artists, intellectuals and hipsters" now occupy the town but it looks like disaster has struck. It is hard to describe unless you see it.

Once a beautiful shoreline with yacht clubs, now deserted and receding

Remnants of construction

Artwork on abandoned houses

Some still live here

Trash everywhere

Funny place to see a luxury car 

Artist adaptation of an airplane

They do have an E-One fire engine!

That was quite the experience!!  Here is a link to a You Tube video that explains more about Bombay Beach: Bombay Beach   Almost eerie!  So we headed back towards El Centro.  

Clear out in the middle of nowhere....!

A train passing by with the mountains in the background.

An abandoned property with artist touch.

What a palm tree looks like when it is not trimmed?!

Back home!

That's it for today.  We got back and Doreen did laundry.  We both then washed the truck and called it a day.