Salton Beach

In the 1950s, 60 odd years ago, this ghost town was once a promising beach resort developing on Salton Lake, a saline lake located on the San Andreas Fault  in Southern California. But when sea levels started to rise and increasing salinity and pollution levels and unemployment gloom became evident, the developers quickly abandoned this grand scheme to move elsewhere in search of a profit margin.

abandoned boat

saltencrusted caravan and other structures 
images from wikipedia

What is left is an entropic landscape of human settlement, economic dismay and namely ecological disaster. Yes, this type of phenomenon is often viewed through a negative lens. Viewed as being an end of a line, a finished state of being, a non functional environment and so on, you get my drift. Instead, I view this as being a moment in time, a state that is constantly changing, in this case there would be both new and adapted ecological environments produced by the highly saline environment and the degradation of the structures brought here by us humans, a highly functional system that may not be your picture perfect traditional beach resort but a system and a space where events still occur. There's potential to explore and investigate these new environments before deeming them redundant and proceed with generic restoration principles.

There is an irony in the faith of Salton Beach, instead of your typical charter tourists coming here for a 2-4 week holiday from their 9-5 jobs to enjoy the pastel colours, cocktails, suntanned bodies, white beaches and crystal clear water you will now get another tourist, the one that is interested in this  unexpected outcome, for example, you may have movie crews shooting some scenes here for their post apocalyptic action flicks.

Salton Beach works, it's function and existence lying in our attitudes toward it.

This is a stunning movie shot on location: