Home to only 150 or so people most of the year, the Salton Sea in southern California —”created by the collision of geology and bad luck”—swells to 4,000 during the winter as people come to escape the ...

By the 1950s, the sea southeast of Palm Springs had become a desert paradise in its own right. The Beach Boys performed there, and stars including Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz vacationed ...

Fascinating and fetid, the Salton Sea in southern California lures me back, every year. Driving south from Utah, I take bits of historic Highway 66 and then skirt Joshua Tree National Park to cruise ...

The late afternoon sun skimmed across the Salton Sea, turning it bluer than the cornflower sky and shadowing the rows of date palms surrounding it. From the highway, the glistening water looked like a ...