Exploring the Imperial Valley, the Salton Sea, and Palomar in Southern California during the summer of 2015.
The Salton Sea is a strange place. It’s an accidental lake, created in 1905 when the Colorado River breached an irrigation canal, and it’s been slowly shrinking and growing saltier since. The shoreline is built from fish bones, the resort towns that boomed around it in the 1950s are largely abandoned, and the whole place has an end-of-the-world quality.
The Imperial Valley next to it is the opposite of the Salton Sea. It should be a desert, but by brining in water from the Colorado River it’s become fantastically productive, intense farm land carefully arranged in a strict geometry. Driving between the two in a single afternoon makes the water politics of the region very concrete.
Palomar Mountain climbs out of all of the desert, up into pines and cooler air, with the observatory dome at the top. They allow a view of the telescope inside.
