Mecca Campground in the Salton Sea Recreation Area, CA

Ever heard of Salton Sea? I hadn’t until a couple years back when I was poring over a CA map and stumbled upon it; I wondered why it was called a sea and if it was a sea how could it be in the middle of the desert and from whence cometh the name Salton. Turns out, it’s called a sea because the water is very salty. The name Salton still throws me, thought at first it was named after a person, the famous fur trapper/guide Ralph Salton perhaps. But no such person ever existed. Salton isn’t a word. Why not Salty or just plain Salt - or Saline or Briny? Nobody seems to know where Salton came from.
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In 1905 a dike that was part of the Imperial Valley irrigation project was breached and for several months, the Colorado River poured through the breach, into what was then called the Salton Sink. The resultant ‘sea’ is 10 miles wide and 35 miles long, the largest lake in CA. It’s a bird watcher’s paradise (and thanks to Sonny Bono, a refuge) with over 400 species hanging out at various times during the year. At the moment, gulls, plovers and pelicans are the most numerous species.
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Eons ago, the Gulf of California extended to this area. More recently, some 2000 years ago, it was a huge fresh water lake with 10000 Native Americans living on its shores. The lake dried up and stayed that way for hundreds of years, finally refilled as mentioned above. Salton Sea is 30% saltier than the ocean and becoming more so because there’s no fresh water circulating through it; many species of fish are threatened by the increasing salinity. When the fish go, the birds that feed on them will go away also.
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To the east are the Chocolate Mountains and the Chocolate Mt Gunnery Range; one wonders what kind of guns they fire there - M&M cannons, chocolate kiss rifles? That taj mahal tent set up was next door to us, belongs to a family group that spends several days at the campground every Thanksgiving.