The Salton Sea is a ghost town, a volcano, and California’s largest lake all at once

The Salton Sea’s surreal world awaits you

About 60 miles southeast of Palm Springs, California’s largest lake sits 227 feet below sea level, and it smells like sulfur on a hot afternoon. That’s not a warning.

That’s the beginning of one of the strangest road trips in the American West. Folk art rises from the sand.

Mud volcanoes bubble at a dirt crossroads. Ghost resorts crumble along a shoreline where speedboats once set world records.

The Salton Sea doesn’t look like anywhere else, and once you’ve been, you’ll understand why people keep coming back.

A Colorado River flood built this inland sea

The Salton Basin had held water before. Ancient Lake Cahuilla filled it around 700 A.D., and the low-lying desert floor waited.

Then, in 1905, floodwaters from the Colorado River broke through an irrigation canal and poured in. For nearly two years, engineers couldn’t stop it.

By the time they did, the water had spread across roughly 35 miles of length and 15 miles of width, creating an inland sea that had no business being in the middle of the Mojave.

The lake sits directly on the San Andreas Fault, which explains the geothermal strangeness you’ll encounter later.

Yacht clubs and ski boats ruled the shoreline once

By the 1950s, this accidental lake had turned into a glamorous escape. Yacht clubs opened.

Hotels went up. Golf courses followed.

The crowds that came for boating, water skiing and sport fishing rivaled some national parks. Then the water started changing.

Rising salt levels and agricultural runoff killed off the fish through the 1960s and 1970s. The smell drove most of the visitors away, and the resorts that lined the shore emptied out, one by one.

What they left behind are crumbling piers, rusted docks and silent streets that now draw a different kind of visitor entirely.

Leonard Knight painted a mountain with a message

Near the tiny town of Niland, a 50-foot mound of adobe, straw and paint rises out of the flat desert. Leonard Knight built Salvation Mountain almost entirely by himself over nearly three decades, beginning in 1984.

The message he wanted the world to see, “God Is Love,” covers every surface in thousands of gallons of color. In 2000, the Folk Art Society of America declared it worthy of preservation.

Two years later, Sen. Barbara Boxer called it a national treasure before Congress. Knight passed away in 2014, but volunteers still maintain the site.

It’s free, open year-round, and nothing prepares you for seeing it in person.

Bombay Beach became an open-air gallery

Bombay Beach sits 223 feet below sea level, making it one of the lowest communities in North America. In its resort days, visitors swam and water-skied here.

Now, since 2016, the Bombay Beach Biennale has scattered permanent art installations along the shoreline and through the streets, turning the whole town into something between a gallery and a dream.

The event celebrated its 10th year in 2026, and everything is free to the public. A drive-in theater stands among the works.

Established artists have left pieces throughout the ruins, and you can walk through all of it any time you visit.

Hundreds of thousands of birds stop here every year

The Salton Sea sits along the Pacific Flyway, the north-south migration corridor that runs from Alaska to South America.

Over 124,000 shorebirds from at least 25 species pass through, ranking this area third in shorebird habitat importance west of the Rocky Mountains.

American white pelicans, burrowing owls, great blue herons and black-necked stilts are among the hundreds of documented species.

The Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge on the southern shore has observation towers, photography blinds and trails through wetlands and desert scrub.

Peak migration runs from October through May, and the largest concentrations are hit in winter.

Mud volcanoes bubble up at a desert crossroads

A magma chamber lies beneath the Salton Sea, and the heat finds its way to the surface.

At the intersection of Davis and Schrimpf roads near Niland, mud volcanoes and mud pots push up through the ground, hissing and shifting. Some dry up.

New ones form. You can stand a few feet away and watch them work.

Geothermal power plants run on this same underground heat, and you’ll see them from the road on the drive in. Go during dry weather.

The dirt roads turn to mud in the rain, and you’ll want to keep moving.

Albert Frey designed the North Shore Yacht Club

In 1959, mid-century architect Albert Frey designed a yacht club on the northern shore, and for a stretch of years, it anchored one of the largest marinas in Southern California. Speedboat races on the sea set world records.

A 1981 flood took out the jetties. The club closed in the early 1990s.

The building sat vacant until a restoration project brought it back in 2010 as a community center, its original design still intact. You can walk the jetty now and look out at water that barely moves.

The crowds are long gone, but the bones of what this place was are right in front of you.

Slab City runs entirely off the grid

Just past Salvation Mountain, a former World War II Marine base left behind a field of concrete slabs. Slab City grew on top of them.

Every winter, hundreds of people arrive in RVs and set up camp, building a temporary community in the desert. Some people stay year-round.

The place has a library, a performance stage and its own informal rhythms.

At the far end of Slab City, East Jesus fills an open lot with sculptures and structures built entirely from salvaged and recycled materials.

Entry is free, though services out here are almost nonexistent, so come prepared.

Painted Canyon cuts through the San Andreas Fault

About 30 minutes from the northern shore, the Mecca Hills Wilderness holds a slot canyon hike worth the detour.

The roughly 5-mile trail through Painted Canyon winds between narrow walls striped in red, orange and cream, colors that came from millions of years of geological movement along the San Andreas Fault. The hike rates are easy to moderate.

You don’t need special gear, but sturdy shoes help on the rocky, sandy floor.

It’s one of the most photographed natural features in the region, and on a weekday morning, you may have the whole canyon to yourself.

Stop for a date shake on the drive in

The road from Palm Springs to the Salton Sea cuts through the Coachella Valley, and date palms line both sides for miles.

The first trees arrived from the Middle East in the 1890s, and the valley has grown dates ever since. Thermal, one of the towns along the route, carries the valley’s largest Medjool date crop.

Fruit stands appear along the highway, and most of them sell date shakes, a blended mix of ice cream and chopped dates that locals have been making for generations.

It’s a good place to stop before the landscape shifts from farmland to open desert.

Metal dinosaurs roam the desert around Borrego Springs

About 30 minutes west of the Salton Sea, the small town of Borrego Springs sits inside Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California’s largest.

Artist Ricardo Breceda placed more than 130 massive metal sculptures across the open desert around town, including life-sized dinosaurs, serpents, wild horses and a giant scorpion.

You can see them from public roads any time, day or night, and there’s no fee. After dark, the sky above Borrego Springs earns its designation as an International Dark Sky Park.

Pair it with the Salton Sea on the same trip and you’ve covered two of Southern California’s most singular corners in one long day.

The smell tells you something real about this place

The sulfur hits hardest in summer, when algae blooms thicken in the warm, salty water.

The lake has been shrinking for years, and the dry lakebed it exposes sends dust across the valley on windy days, affecting air quality for miles.

State and federal projects are working to cover the exposed playa with water and vegetation to slow the problem. None of that makes the Salton Sea less worth seeing.

Decay and strange beauty share the same shoreline here, and that combination sits with you long after you drive back toward Palm Springs and the world starts looking normal again.

Visit the Salton Sea State Recreation Area in California

You can get your bearings at the Salton Sea State Recreation Area on the northeastern shore, about 90 minutes from Palm Springs.

The visitor center covers the area’s history, and the park has camping and hiking trails along the water’s edge.

Note that the Bombay Beach and upper Mecca Beach sections of the state park are currently closed, though the town of Bombay Beach and its art installations stay open to the public.

Bring plenty of water, a full tank of gas and check air quality advisories before you head out, especially on windy days. The best time to go is October through March.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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