Bombay Beach: Reminders of a Golden Era Given Way to Devastation

The Salton Sea giveth, and the Salton Sea taketh away… seriously.

You are greeted by a very old sign of a long-time ago thrill as you enter Bombay Beach.

Thankfully it is not as hot as the last time I was here. That day it was nearly 111 degrees and the breeze felt like a blast furnace. I live in Phoenix, and even for me, it was hotter than hell.

And when folks tell me it’s a “dry heat”, I remind those kind folks that so is a pizza oven, but it’s no place to have a picnic.

Bombay Beach, on the east side of the Salton Sea, has been the subject of many photo essays, articles, and scientific studies. There is sort of a strange romance about the place, and it brings people from all over the world to its shores.

There is also a distinct odor if you are there in the summer heat. Sort of a blend of rotting flesh and the back porch after a frat party turned ugly.

The lake is dead. Deader than dead. Fini. Kaput.

No wildlife for miles around, and even the seabirds you see in the fields down towards Westmoreland and Brawley don’t come up to this mess. It is death encapsulated. And they know it.

Carnage. That is the first thing that comes to my mind when I visit this place.

The beach is littered with skeletons of fish that died decades ago. Exposed and buried in the white sand beaches that ain’t sand at all, bucko. That white, crunchy crap is really the ground-up bones of millions of fish that died off from the poisonous water.

If you wander close to the edge, you notice the water is a retched, stain-colored brown. The blue you see in the distance comes from the bright, cloudless, sunlit sky above. The blue is reflecting off the surface. And did I mention it smells really bad?

Especially in the summer.

Once Bombay Beach was a thriving and extravagant playland for the rich and famous. Sonny and Cher, The Beach Boys, John Wayne… the hot shots of the west coast played there, and they played hard.

Waterskiing, parties, yachts, and never-ending beach soirees led to small towns and hotels popping up all along the coast. Directly across the lake to the west is Salton City. As dead and hollowed out as Bombay Beach, most of the buildings have been removed. All that remains are wide and rotting roads and the remnants of cul-de-sacs where the affluent spent mild winters skiing and hosting BBQs.

The Last Resort: Spring 2021. Was this a joke? It had to be. Still no resort and no one seems to know anything about it.

The great Salton Sea — and especially Bombay Beach — was the place to be in the 50s and 60s. It was just down the road from Palm Springs and was a very uptown, cool place to play. The resorts and hotels that fought for beachside property here were considered some of the best in the world.

Bombay Beach was one of the special destinations and had a bustling population of high rollers, hollywood types, and artists. But as of late, it has become a “place to be” for old hipsters and “artists” who come to get away from people. Or have no other place to go.

A few articles I have read said that there was a renewed interest back in 2017, but I certainly cannot see where that has influenced the place at all. Maybe some people see something of a future there.

Maybe.

The town now has a population of about 200 people… if you can count them. I once spent 4 hours there photographing and never saw another soul. Not one.

Eerie? Hell, it was really kinda freaky.

There is a berm that surrounds the spit of land the town is on. The water kept rising after the town was born, and they had to keep it at bay. The lake seems to be below the level that had necessitated the dyke, and no one maintains it anyway. Now it is just a dirt and garbaged covered eyesore at the edge of a bigger eyesore.

I do not know if this was a real drive in, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Today a large white piece of board holds the attention of about 50 junk cars with more rust than paint.

The inland sea was created by a government screwup back in 1905, when the Colorado River filled a great and ancient dry lake bed with river water. For many years, California kept a little fresh water flowing into the lake, but LA became too big and they needed the water. So even that trickle was cut off.

Without any way for the water to flow, it was just a big, huge really, stagnant pond.

I believe it is one of the greatest environmental disasters that we see before us and very few people are working on a solution. The bacteria that lies below these toxic water are unknown at this time. When evaporation finally starts to expose the deeper edges and exposes the depths of this poisonous dump, we may face a terrible crises of blowing, toxic dust.

Oh, and it sits directly atop the San Andreas Faultline. You know, just to add a little kicker to the whole thing.

I’m a sucker for destruction. Textures, the visible signs of time, and the abiity of the elements to ravage what humans have built has been a continuous theme in my personal work.

Spoilage is rampant. Houses and buildings ravaged by the high sodium water and winds are in a constant state of decay. Garbage, old tires, and every type of wasted resource sits silently awaiting its total demise.

The house was empty. Most of them are empty. But it seems on every street there is one house being added on to, or renovated, or painted… why?

I come back to this place every few years. It fascinates me. Textures, time, decay… you can SEE it. Feel it.

Smell it.

This day there was just a little bit of a rotting smell from the water, and it wasn’t too hot. This was in December, 2019.

I had been shooting in the Anza Borrego Desert (one of my favorite places ever…) and decided to drop by and see what had changed, if anything, in the two years since I had been there.

A lot had changed.

But most of it remained in that steady and slow tortuous arc of destruction.

I wandered around for an hour, grabbed a soda at the Ski Inn — the only establishment open on that Thursday afternoon — and headed down to El Centro for the night.

El Centro has great Mexican food.

I do wonder about the folks who live there. What are they thinking? How do they see this thing going in the next 10 years? Why are some of them renovating their houses and trying to raise flowers?

Will someone come up with a plan to safely drain the lake, cover the incredibly damaged desert, and get rid of the bacteria that surely awaits us in the murky depths of this stagnant fuckup?

I will be going back soon. I plan on a motorcycle ride up to Death Valley, and may take a side trip over to Bombay Beach to see what has changed since 2019.

I carried a Nikon Df, 28, 35, 50, and 85mm primes. It was very bright so I left the tripod locked in the trunk. Not a cloud in the sky, not a single sound of a bird, and just the crunch of boots on the hard scrabble dirt as a soundtrack.