Explore Always • June 2, 2026
The California Resort City Built for 40,000 People… That Never Came
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Salton City is one of the strangest places in California — a planned waterfront resort city built for 40,000 people along the Salton Sea that never fully materialized.
Today, hundreds of miles of paved streets stretch across the desert in California’s Imperial Valley, but most of the houses were never built.
In this documentary, we explore the fascinating history of Salton City and the Salton Sea — from the accidental creation of the lake in 1905 to the ambitious development plans of the 1950s and 1960s that promised to turn the area into a thriving desert resort.
Developers once envisioned a “California Riviera” here, complete with marinas, golf courses, shopping centers, and more than 25,000 residential lots. At the time, the Salton Sea was attracting millions of visitors each year for boating, water skiing, and weekend recreation.
But the dream didn’t last.
Environmental changes, rising salinity, and a shrinking shoreline gradually drove tourists away — leaving behind one of the most unusual landscapes in the American West: a suburban grid built for a city that never arrived.
Join me as we explore the history, ambition, and environmental reality behind Salton City — the California city that almost was.
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