Keep your eyes (and mind) open!

Attracted to desolate areas? MEG member Eric Johnson shares his experience in two virtual ghost towns in California. 

The area around the Salton Sea in southern California has long held an attraction for many photographers for its collection of semi-abandoned towns and its atmosphere of post-apocalyptic desolation.  The Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when springtime flooding breached irrigation canals along the Colorado River, inundating approximately 900 square miles of the Imperial Valley.  Development around the new lake began in the 1920s, making the Salton Sea a popular tourist destination for people from nearby Palm Springs and Los Angeles. 

Increasing agriculture in the Imperial Valley led to decreased water inflow into the lake.  At the same time, prehistoric salt beds under the lake increased its salinity, and the shore of the lake began to recede, leaving behind an inhospitable, salt-encrusted landscape.  All of these environmental changes made the Salton Sea less viable as a tourist destination, and the towns around the lake began their decline.  

While on a trip to southern California last October, I made a side trip to two of these towns, Bombay Beach and Salton Sea Shores.  I went with the intention of photographing some of the decaying structures in these soon-to-be ghost towns, and I certainly found what I was looking for, spending most of my brief visit there photographing abandoned residential and commercial buildings.  Each of the two towns has an odd mixture of occupied and abandoned blocks, with the blocks near the water being generally deserted, and the blocks closer to the roads into and out of town more populated.  However, despite clear signs of human habitation (cars in driveways, well-tended yards) in the more lived-in sections of town, I did not see more than two or three people the entire afternoon.  That may be attributable to desert dwellers’ reluctance to go out in the mid-afternoon sun, but whatever the reason, the whole area was eerily quiet, which even in the occupied parts of town.  This quiet only accentuated the feeling of being in a ghost town.