Salton Sea

Joe Barrera (joebar@MICROSOFT.com)
Sat, 12 Jul 1997 10:28:49 -0700

I lived in Southern California for five years before I actually took a
good look at a map and noticed the Salton Sea, a LARGE body of water
(the size of lake Tahoe) sitting in the middle of the Sonoran desert.
Juliet and I drove out to see one Summer and the air temperature was
like 130F or something unreal - probably the hottest I've ever
encountered. There were folks fishing and there were dead fish parts on
the edge of the water and it STANK. The "beach" appeared to be made not
out of sand but of fish scales! It was a really surreal experience. We
were pretty disgusted and disappointed and left soon after arriving.

At any rate, I learned recently that the Salton Sea was created as the
result of an irrigation accident?!

http://www.desertusa.com/borrego/du_salton.html

"The Salton Sea was formed between 1905 and 1907 when the Colorado River
burst through poorly built irrigation controls south of Yuma, Arizona.
Almost the entire flow of the river filled the Salton Basin for more
than a year, inundating communities, farms and the main line of the
Southern Pacific Railroad.

"Continued filling of the Salton Sink was finally stopped in 1907, when
a line of protective levees was built by boxcars dumping boulders into
the breach from Southern Pacific tracks. By then, this inland lake was
about 40 miles long and 13 miles wide, covering an area of about 400
square miles."

- Joe

Joseph S. Barrera III (joebar@microsoft.com)
http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar
Phone, Office: (415) 778-8227; Cellular: (415) 601-3719; Home: (415)
588-4801
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