So I was looking around on Google Maps today, and I noticed a giant lake that’s so very close to San Diego. It’s huge! Why doesn’t anyone talk about it, or go there? It seems to me that California has a dirty little secret. Using my Veronica Mars-like detective skills and my handy-dandy Wikipedia, it didn’t take long to get to the bottom of it.
According to Wikipedia, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on over there, like the fact that it was kinda man-made. Read for yourself:Â
“The creation of the Salton Sea of today started in 1905, when heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused the Colorado River to swell and breach an Imperial Valley dike. It took nearly two years to control the Colorado River’s flow into the formerly dry Salton Sink and stop the flooding. Once part of the vast inland sea which covered the area, the endorheic Salton Sink was the site of a major salt mining operation. As the basin filled, the town of Salton, a Southern Pacific Railroad siding and Torres-Martinez Indian land were submerged. The sudden influx of water and the lack of any drainage from the basin resulted in the formation of the Salton Sea.”
Okay, so…cool, right? We have a big salt lake. Let’s go float on it, build a resort, or start a religion. Aha! That’s where it gets tricky. Turns out it’s not nearly as cool as the one the Mormons staked out up in Utah. In fact, there are a lot of problems at California’s secret lake, which you can read about here.
There have been some ideas for what to do with it, and Sonny Bono, former Palm Springs mayor and husband of Cher, seemed to have tried to spearhead something before he died. So now it looks like it’s up to me. After having read all the different ideas, and becoming an expert in the subject, I vote for the one where they dig a canal from the Pacific Ocean over to our big secret lake, how cool would that be??!?!?!? I’d sail around in there.
