If one looks to the mountains on either side of the SS, the water-line from the prehistoric lake can still be seen. This if more visible on the west side, north of I-8, just as the hiway starts to go uphill toward Jacumba.

The existing SS was created when the Colorado Rv. changed it’s course in 1905. I believe that water flowed for about 3 weeks before engineers managed to get the river back to its old channel. I’ve been told that if you fly over the lake, you can see an old train under water. It was part of the effort to stop the water.

The area was originally called the “Salton Sink”. There was a salt mine there, which is why the water became so salty.

Also, I remember several childhood visits to the “Mudpots” near the southern end of the SS. Those were created by geothermally heated gas bubling through pools of mud — much like one would expect to see in Yellowstone.

Thanks for the memories.

Now adays, The Salton Sea is for people who want to escape big town living. It’s definitely ghetto with tweakers, desert rats and massive amounts of white trash but that’s just what some people desire.

Hmm.. a couple of things in the words above don’t seem to fit. Why would Nazi submarines case problems with fishing off California, since borders the Pacific (and Nazi subs were in the Atlantic)? I’ve never seen any statistics that fishing in California was every primarily from the Salton Sea, considering that before about 1900 it didn’t even exist.

I don’t know about fishing statistics, but there most certainly were U-Boats in the Pacific during WWII. They were protecting ships going to/from Japan, which was of course allied with Nazi Germany.