Salton City, Calif. is a failed resort city established in the late 1950s. Roads were constructed, ammenities were built, but no one bought houses in the master-planned community. The death of the city came when the corporation that started the venture, the Holly Sugar Corp., supposedly bailed on the project when it didn’t seem profitable enough. Combined with rising salt levels in the sea and a pair of tropical storms hitting the area, the dream of building a vacation lifestyle community in the stark heat of the Imperial Valley was shattered.
Today, driven to the Sea by low prices and a slumping economy, some have built small trailer homes on land that was supposed to be reserved for pristine vacation houses. The poor condition of the sea water has led to an environmental downfall, which makes the desire to live in such an area questionable.
Several times I read about Salton City, Calif. online and wanted to take a visit. Recently, I was able to. The sights and smells were incredible and disgusting: paltry life and a wasted environment. The sand isn’t made of rocks. It’s made of weathered and broken-down fish skeletons. This environmental damage has been reoccurring for decades.
Below are some pictures from the trip. It made me wonder what would happen to our world if corporations defined what life-ventures were profitable or not. It seems that a community founded entirely by a corporation is almost always destined for failure and downfall.
Approaching the Salton Sea Beach Marina. This is where I first smelled the sewage.
An abandoned trailer, decades old, that someone had painted completely pink, tires included.
Inside the pink trailer abandoned near the Salton Sea Beach.
A view from the first marina I stopped at. From a distance, the Salton Sea looked like any other large body of water.
These benches have been untouched for so long.
A roadside sign for the Salton Sea Beach and Marina. The path between Highway 86 and the beach was filled with trailer homes built up like actual homes with yards, fences, garages, etc.
Like many abandoned locations, the signs were in complete disrepair. But this one was curious: It was posted by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. The Salton Sea is entirely Californian, as far as I know.
One of many dead fish on a beach in Salton City, CA.
The shoreline with water at its murkiest. The closer you got to this water, the more the air smelled of sea water and sewage, though what you see could be algae.
No one was fishing the day I visited, but I’m not surprised. The chances of a clean fish coming out of the Sea within the area of this boat landing are slim to none today.
More masses of dead and rotting fish washed ashore next to what I thought to be a shore-side fueling station.
This is a good illustration of the “fish bone” sand that makes up Salton City’s desolate and polluted beaches. The gradient of fish bone to “fish bone sand” is apparent.
The barren roads in Salton City get errie when you try to envision all of the houses that were supposed to be built along them.
More environmental devistation. A crane in the middle of one of the abandoned roads.
All of the streets in Salton City are named after nice, sailing/beach-themed things, like “Sea Breeze” and “Ocean Garden.” This street is “Yacht Club.”
The Salton City Park was one of the few places in the area that was in excellent repair. The water seemed to be a bit cleaner than that in the Sea.
About The Author
Kyle Anderson
I'm a media and IT professional and JavaScript developer who worked most recently as an Associate Broadcast IT Engineer (Tier II) for CNN in Atlanta.
One of my life-long goals is to help bridge data divides - missing connections between software systems and data stores - promoting inter-system communication and automation. Many of the projects described here reflect this goal in some way or another.
