Should This Lake Exist?

The Salton Sea exists because a major irrigation mistake turned a desert basin into a temporary inland ocean—and the resulting lake has since become a cautionary tale about environmental neglect. In 1905, engineers trying to irrigate the American Southwest diverted water from the Colorado River while also attempting to prevent flooding. The plan failed: the river overtopped its channels and flooded a low-lying plain roughly 70 meters (over 200 feet) below sea level. For about two years, the basin filled with the river’s entire volume until flooding could be stopped, leaving behind the lake that still sits in California today.

Geography and geology help explain why the lake persists and why the region is unusually dynamic. The Salton Sea occupies a tectonically active area near the San Andreas Fault, where magma sits relatively close to the surface. Heat rises through mud volcanoes, and the region now uses that geothermal energy through seven geothermal plants that together generate enough electricity for more than 100,000 homes. Even so, the lake’s long-term survival has been far less stable than its accidental creation.

At first, the “miracle in the desert” seemed like a win. In the 1950s and 1960s, towns and resorts sprang up, celebrities visited, and fish were introduced—so successfully that anglers could catch fish with little effort. Birdlife flourished, and the lake briefly looked like a new Riviera.

That optimism collapsed as the lake’s water chemistry changed. The Salton Sea has limited inflow sources—mainly agricultural runoff—which carries salt into the basin. Because the lake sits below sea level, it has no natural outflow. Water leaves primarily through evaporation, which concentrates dissolved salts over time. The salinity has risen to about 50 grams per liter, higher than seawater, making it difficult for fish to survive. Large fish die-offs followed, producing strong odors, while algal blooms turned the water brown and degraded the ecosystem. Resorts closed, leaving behind abandoned shorelines and ghost-town remnants.

The lake’s condition also challenges the idea that “letting it evaporate” is simply nature correcting an error. The region did have lakes before the 1905 flood—water bodies that repeatedly formed and receded over thousands of years, often at higher levels. The modern disaster is therefore not a natural return to baseline so much as a slow slide driven by human choices and the absence of sustained management.

The broader takeaway is twofold: humans can reshape the planet on massive scales, including creating and destroying entire bodies of water. And without ongoing care, systems tend to drift toward disorder—towns crumble, ecosystems degrade, and the consequences become visible. The Salton Sea stands as a real-world lesson in what happens when an environmental “accident” is treated like a temporary convenience rather than a responsibility.