Salton Sea and WWII Tanks
The Salton Sea was created in 1905 when water from the Colorado River spilled out of a poorly constructed California Development Company irrigation system and into a basin in the desert. The spillage continued for 2 years before repairs were completed creating California’s largest lake; 15 miles wide by 35 miles long. The Salton Sea was a thriving vacation destination in the 50’s and 60’s.
However, in the 70’s and 80’s run off from local agriculture contaminated the lake, raising the salinity and lowering oxygen levels. It is now a mostly abandoned toxic area with poor air quality, a strong sulfur smell and little hope of recovery.
Being 525 square miles of water, the Salton Sea completely looks like an ocean with sandy beach shore. We didn’t get too close because it is very toxic to dogs. What a waste of a great body of water. C’mon California, can you do better?
The drive to the Salton Sea has very cool rock formations and is otherwise, miles and miles of lemon and lime and pistachio trees. You can see how agriculture could have killed this body of water.
The town of Chiriaco Summit has a George Patton Museum that commemorates his life and how important he was to World War II. The museum is full of relics from that time including several complete tanks and one you can actually sit in.
The area of eastern California and western Arizon was used as George Patton’s Desert Training Center, before the North African Campaign in WWII, to train troops. More than a million soldiers trained in the DTC between April 1942 and April 1944!
The uniforms, relics and timelines of World War II was shocking and very sad. Such an evil anarchist. Let’s hope we never forget and never go back.
Hitler started leading the Nazi’s in 1921, became dictator on Nazi Germany in 1933 and committed suicide in 1945. Too many years of pure evil and about 80 million people died.
Eventually the Good won the war but so much was lost.
General Patton died shortly after the end of the war, after many years of training soldiers and fighting in wars, in a car accident.
