Southern California doesn’t have the history required to create a lot of ghost towns. The Salton Sea is a sort of natural equivalent though. Formed in a strange accident that saw the Colorado River flooding the Borrego desert for several years, the Salton Sea became a huge tourism mecca before slowly dying a slow death as agricultural runoff polluted the water and the lack of any source of replenishment dried much of the lake away.
Today, not much remains. I’m going to post a series of pictures I took 12 years ago – I can’t speak to the current state of the place but I’m willing to guess it’s no better.
This is the start of a few posts that, for the first time here, are going to be scans of actual film negatives instead of the normal digital stuff. Because of that, the EXIF information will be missing. I do know that most of this was taken with a Canon A-1 or a Canon Eos Elan 2E and a 50mm 1.8. I’ll post more info when I have it.
This is the Sundowner Motel – I have a few more shots of the place as well. It had obviously been closed a long time, but I’ve learned it burned down in 1998, a few years before these pictures were taken.
Sundowner Motel, South West side of Salton Sea, 3.6.2000
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Awesome. I’d love to see this in person.
If you’re ever in SD or Palm Springs (or LA), it’s a great day trip. Nobody is there, which is nice, and the desert is beautiful. Great combination with camping in Borrego. I’ll post more…
Went to the Salton Sea in 2010 when Monica and I were visiting Palm Springs — it was really impressive to see. Have you watched the documentary that John Waters narrates?
I don’t think I’ve seen the documentary. Google says it’s called Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea – I’ll see if I can find it.
The Sea must be saved, lest barren playa breaks up and into the wind it goes! Dust storms will ruin Palm Springs. I say, Clean Mexicali’s wastewater, dump it into the adjacent New River, where it will flow downhill to the Sea. Mexicali has 800,000 population & all its water also comes from The Colorado River.
[...] shots are the same motel as the last post, but some different angles. When I was there in 2000, there was one chunk of a building left, [...]