Timeline of the Salton Sea

Salton Sea
The Salton Sea, with the Santa Rosa Mountains in the background
LocationSalton Sink, Colorado Desert
Imperial and Riverside counties, California, U.S.
Coordinates33°19′59″N 115°50′03″W / 33.33306°N 115.83417°W / 33.33306; -115.83417
TypeEndorheic rift lake
Alamo River
New River
Whitewater River
None
8,360 sq mi (21,700 km2)[1]
Max. length35 mi (56 km)[1]
Max. width15 mi (24 km)[1]
Surface area
305 sq mi (790 km2) (March 2025)[2]
Max. depth33 ft (10 m) (2024)[3]
Water volume
6,000,000 acre⋅ft (7.4 km3)
Salinity65–70 ppt (2024)[3]
Surface elevation
−241.8 ft (−73.7 m) (NAVD 88, August 2026)[4]
SettlementsBombay Beach, Desert Beach, Desert Shores, North Shore, Salton City, Salton Sea Beach
ReferencesU.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Timeline of the Salton Sea

This is a timeline of the Salton Sea, a shallow saline lake in the Salton Trough of Southern California. The basin has filled and dried many times. The present lake dates from 1905, when the Colorado River broke through an irrigation intake and ran into the Salton Sink for about two years. Agricultural drainage has sustained it ever since. The lake reached its highest level in the mid-1990s and has been shrinking and growing saltier since.

The sea supports large numbers of migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway and has seen repeated mass die-offs of birds and fish. It drew resort development and heavy tourism in the 1950s and 1960s, then declined through flooding, rising salinity and pollution. A 2003 water transfer, the Quantification Settlement Agreement, cut its inflow further; the exposed lakebed is now a source of windblown dust and a public-health concern, and the geothermal field on its southern shore has become a focus of lithium extraction.

Statistics

  • Surface area – shrinking: 380 square miles (980 km2) in 1993 and 1996, and approximately 350 square miles (910 km2) in 2015. By 2021 it had shrunk to 324 square miles (840 km2), and it covered a little over 300 square miles (780 km2) in 2025.[5][6][7][8][9]
  • Dimensions – Approximately 45 miles (72 km) long when it formed. 35 miles (56 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide in 1993 and 1994, then 35 miles (56 km) long and 17 miles (27 km) wide in 1996 and 1997.[5][10][11][12][13]
  • Salinity – Around 44,000 mg/L in 1997 and again in 2003, compared with roughly 35,000 mg/L for sea water.[14][15][16][17][5][10][11]

Prehistory and Lake Cahuilla

  • Geologic past – Silt from the Colorado River builds a delta across the northern area of the Gulf of California, raising an area about 43 feet (13 m) above sea level. This seals off the northern Salton Trough, which has a bottom below sea level. The river gradually shifts course over time and when it turns north into the trough again the basin becomes a freshwater lake. When it runs south to the Gulf, the lake dries up.[18][19][20][21]
  • Late Pleistocene–Holocene – The Salton Sink fills in and dries up repeatedly as the Colorado River changes course, forming a succession of lakes, the largest of them Lake Cahuilla.[22][18][23]
  • Late Holocene – The five rhyolite domes around the Salton Buttes erupt in three episodes: Mullet Island first, then Obsidian Butte, then Rock Hill. The Global Volcanism Program gives the episodes as 290 BCE, 10 CE and 210 CE, each ± 100 years. Mullet Island is the least well dated and may be several thousand years older.[24][25][26]
  • Late Holocene – Obsidian from the Obsidian Butte area near the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea becomes a regional toolstone, and is widely traded across northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States.[26][25]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Salton Sea". Colorado River Basin Regional Water Quality Control Board. Retrieved August 14, 2026.
  2. ↑ "Salton Sea". Colorado River Science. Retrieved August 14, 2026.
  3. 1 2 Hung, Caroline; Diamond, Charles; Sinclair, Ryan; Lee, Meng-Chen; Stenstrom, Michael; Freilich, Mara A.; Montgomery, Quinn; Marquez, Consuelo; Lyons, Timothy W. (December 28, 2024). "Nutrient loading as a key cause of short- and long-term anthropogenic ecological degradation of the Salton Sea". Scientific Reports. 14 (1) 31247. Bibcode:2024NatSR..1431247H. doi:10.1038/s41598-024-82633-y. PMC 11682391. PMID 39732884.
  4. ↑ "Current Information on the Salton Sea". Pacific Institute. Retrieved August 14, 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 Perry, Tony (August 16, 1993). "Lovers of Salton Sea hope to turn back tide of decline". Los Angeles Times. the sea is 30% saltier than the ocean ... 150,000 eared grebes died at the Salton Sea in 1991 and 1992
  6. ↑ Perry, Tony (August 28, 1996). "Salton Sea dieoff nears 4,000 birds". Los Angeles Times. In other mass dieoffs at the Salton Sea, including the death of 150,000 grebes in 1992, scientists have been stumped in their attempts to find a root cause.
  7. ↑ Iovenko, Chris (November 9, 2015). "Toxic dust from a dying California lake". The Atlantic.
  8. ↑ Spagat, Elliot (August 30, 2021). "Lithium fuels hopes for revival on California's largest lake". Associated Press. Imperial County has a poverty rate of 22%, among California's highest.
  9. ↑ James, Ian (May 24, 2025). "California turns on water to create new wetlands on the shore of the shrinking Salton Sea". Los Angeles Times.
  10. 1 2 Perry, Tony (July 6, 1994). "Lake Woebegone's welcome sign". Los Angeles Times. In 1981-82, 394,000 people came to play on beaches called Mecca, Corvina, Salt Creek and Bombay. ... From mid-February to mid-April an estimated 20,000 grebes died in the southern portion of the sea.
  11. 1 2 Perry, Tony (June 8, 1997). "A wave of new hope for saving a sick sea". Los Angeles Times. About 2,200 of the black water birds (and 2,200 birds of other species) have died since March.
  12. ↑ Boyle, Robert H. (June 1996). "The life or death of the Salton Sea?". Smithsonian Magazine.
  13. ↑ Plevin, Rebecca (December 16, 2024). "In the dust of the Coachella Valley, residents push for a park along the shrinking Salton Sea". Los Angeles Times.
  14. ↑ Hardie, R. Wayne (October 3, 1997). "Evaluation of options for remediation of the Salton Sea" (PDF). Testimony before the Subcommittee on Water and Power, Committee on Resources, U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved August 14, 2026. The Salton Sea Authority has set a goal of 35 parts per thousand (ppt), which is equal to the salt content of ocean water, and a decrease of about 9 ppt from the current level.
  15. ↑ United States Bureau of Reclamation; Salton Sea Authority (January 2000). Salton Sea Restoration Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report, Chapter 1 (Report). Retrieved August 13, 2026. Salinity is 44,000 mg/L, compared to 35,000 mg/L for sea water.
  16. ↑ Salton Sea study status report (PDF) (Report). United States Bureau of Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region. January 2003. Retrieved August 14, 2026. Salt concentrations are currently about 44,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L), or about 25 percent higher than ocean water.
  17. ↑ Randall, Laura (March 23, 2003). "California's dead sea". The Washington Post.
  18. 1 2 Brothers, D.; Driscoll, N. W.; Kent, G.; Baskin, R. L.; Harding, A. J.; Kell, A. (2022). "Seismostratigraphic analysis of Lake Cahuilla sedimentation cycles and fault displacement history beneath the Salton Sea, California, USA". Geosphere. 18 (4): 1354–1376. Bibcode:2022Geosp..18.1354B. doi:10.1130/GES02468.1.
  19. ↑ Rockwell, Thomas K.; Meltzner, Aron J.; Haaker, Erik C.; Madugo, Daniel (2022). "The late Holocene history of Lake Cahuilla: Two thousand years of repeated fillings within the Salton Trough, Imperial Valley, California". Quaternary Science Reviews. 282 107456. Bibcode:2022QSRv..28207456R. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107456. hdl:10356/155815. 1731-1733 CE (Lake A), 1618-1636 CE (Lake B), 1486-1503 CE (Lake C), 1118-1165 or 1192-1241 CE (Lake D), 1007-1070 CE (Lake E), 930-966 CE (Lake F), and 612-5 BCE (Lake G)
  20. ↑ "SDSU Study Reveals History of Lake Cahuilla". San Diego State University. May 31, 2022. Retrieved August 13, 2026. seven periods of filling
  21. ↑ "Imperial Valley, California, USA". United States Geological Survey EROS Center. Retrieved August 13, 2026.
  22. ↑ "Ancient Lake Cahuilla High Water Mark". United States Geological Survey. January 24, 2008. Retrieved August 13, 2026.
  23. ↑ "Water Availability of the Salton Sea Watershed". United States Geological Survey. June 28, 2023. Retrieved August 13, 2026.
  24. ↑ Wright, H. M.; Vazquez, J. A.; Champion, D. E.; Calvert, A. T.; Mangan, M. T.; Stelten, M.; Cooper, K. M.; Herzig, C.; Schriener, A. (2015). "Episodic Holocene eruption of the Salton Buttes rhyolites, California, from paleomagnetic, U-Th, and Ar/Ar dating". Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. 16 (4): 1198–1210. Bibcode:2015GGG....16.1198W. doi:10.1002/2015GC005714. Retrieved August 13, 2026.
  25. 1 2 "Salton Buttes". Global Volcanism Program. Smithsonian Institution. the domes were erupted during an interval of about 500 years between about 2,300 and 1,800 years ago
  26. 1 2 Schmitt, A. K.; Martin, A.; Stockli, D. F.; Farley, K. A.; Lovera, O. M. (2012). "(U-Th)/He zircon and archaeological ages for a late prehistoric eruption in the Salton Trough (California, USA)". Geology. 41 (1): 7–10. doi:10.1130/G33634.1.
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