2. INTRODUCTION
The Salton Sea is California’s largest inland lake,
stretching about 35 miles long and up to 15 miles wide,
with a water surface of approximately 360 square miles.
The Sea is a terminal lake, which means that it has no
outlet to the ocean. Over the past several thousand
years, the Sea has intermittently both filled and dried
up. It was created in 1905 when a nearby irrigation canal
carrying Colorado River water breached and water
overflowed into the lakebed. The Salton Sea is one of
those unique parts of California history that has
changed a lot in the last century.
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3. RECREATIONAL
DESTINATION
The Salton Sea was once a popular recreational area.
Because of the warm winter climate, proximity to
Southern California cities, large size, and active fishery,
the Sea became a popular destination for tourism,
fishing, and water sports. The California Department of
Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) stocked the Sea with a variety
of sport fish. At its recreational peak, the Salton Sea
was drawing 1.5 million visitors annually, at the time,
more than Yosemite National Park. However, tourism
over recent decades has largely faded away.
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4. THE DROP IN POPULARITY
When the 1970s came along, the popularity of the Salton
Sea suddenly dropped. With rising salinity, shoreline
flooding, and fertilizers overflowing from nearby farms,
this man-made lake became utter chaos. As environmental
troubles started arising, fewer visitors set out to the lake,
making it akin to a ghost town. Salton City is now a shell
of its former self with abandoned motels and rusted out
RVs looking like tombstones of a forgotten era. The area
still has a small population, but most of its 15,000
residents left long ago, leaving behind the remnants of a
forgotten piece of history.
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5. FISH DIE OFFS
Today, the Salton Sea is 25% saltier than the ocean,
meaning the only fish that can survive in it are the
local desert pupfish and the high -salt tolerant
tilapia, introduced by accident from a tropical fish
farm. By the 1980s, the ecological instability of the
sea had reached a point where fish and birds
dramatically perished at once in massive die -off
events, with tens of thousands of their bodies
accumulating on shores each time it happened.
6. MUD POTS
The bubbling mud pots are hidden
gems of the Salton Sea region, often
described as pockets of warm clay. The
mud bubbles and gurgles on the surface
due to geothermal activity, forcing
warm water to rise. A few of the
featured mud pots have been bubbling
for so long that they have now created
miniature mud volcanoes. The color
comes from various minerals in the
soil that have been dissolved in the
water and brought up from underground
by the rising gases.
7. WHAT NEXT?
Trying to figure out the exact history of what happened to
the Salton Sea is as difficult as seeing what’s beneath the
surface of its murky, toxic and algae-infested waters. For
residents near the Salton Sea, the most pressing
problem is the threat of toxic dust. The receding
Salton Sea will reveal at least 75 square miles of
playa, the lake bed that the water once hid. When
that soil dries, it will begin to emit dust laced with
industrial runoff from the surrounding farms. By 2045
whatever waters remain will be 5 times as salty as the
Pacific Ocean, killing any remaining living fish and
scattering the birds that feed off them. There’s a continued
argument about what exactly should be done next. There
seems to be no solution to the massive problem of the
Salton Sea, and for decades it has sat, semi-abandoned,
accumulating more and more complications.
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