Over the past few years, visiting the Salton Sea took on an urgency of almost religious significance for me. Yeah, I loved the movie, The Salton Sea, but this only served to strengthen my desire to visit the Salton Sea. It did not create this desire in the first place. My passion to visit was sparked by the stories and legends I heard of the Salton Sea, the denizens of the Salton Sea and the pictures I had seen of the Salton Sea and the surrounding area.
I was not to be disappointed…
One of the first things I observed upon entering the Salton Sea area, was this example of industrial carnage. And anyone that knows me, knows that I have a great artistic appreciation for industrial carnage. It’s like poetry to me – in three dimensions.
The above pictures were immediately followed by a string of abandoned homes. I was on the proverbial Cloud 9.
After driving through Niland, I visited Salvation Mountain which merited its own post. However, just past Salvation Mountain, one finds Slab City:
Slab City (or The Slabs) is a camp next to the Salton Sea used by RV owners and squatters from across North America and the world. It takes its name from the concrete slabs and pylons that remain from the abandoned Marine Barracks Camp Dunlap there. Apparently, a group of Marines remained after the base closed, and the place has been inhabited ever since.
Several thousand people, use the site during the winter months. These “snowbirds” stay only for the winter, before migrating north in the spring to cooler climes. The temperatures are pretty brutal during the summer; nonetheless, there is a group of around 150 permanent residents, who live in the Slabs all year round. Most of these “Slabbers” subsist on government checks (SSI and Social Security). However, in a slight contradiction, many of the “slabbers” also have a strong desire for freedom from the American government.
Slab City is both decommissioned and uncontrolled – there is no charge for parking your RV. The camp has no electricity, no running water or other services (most campers use generators or solar panels to generate electricity).
Slab City, along with Salvation Mountain, was featured in the book Into the Wild and also in the 2007 movie of the same name.
I thought my father (Jimmy) summed up Slab City very well when upon reviewing my pictures he commented that it looked like a permanent Burning Man camp.
Niland.
There are abandoned buildings and houses all over the eastern regions of the Salton Sea.
The Salton Sea is off to the left in this picture.
And this is it. The Salton Sea…
From 1944-45, B-29s from the U.S. Army’s 393rd Heavy Bombardment Squadron, commanded by Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, made regular but highly secret practice flights from Wendover Air Base in Utah to drop dummies of a new bomb into the Salton Sea.
On Aug. 6, 1945, Tibbets and his crew, in the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan.
Dead tilapia line the shores of the Salton Sea – One peculiarity of the Salton Sea are the periodic algal blooms that cause the Salton Sea tilapia, to die in massive numbers.
Pumped to finally be at the Salton Sea.
As with every other place I slept on my trip, I had the entire area to myself.
1960: North Shore Beach and Yacht Club Estates opened on the north side of the Sea.
I don’t know why it was there, but I thought it was creepy.
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