America Built a Sea by Accident

In 1905 more than two thirds of the Colorado River turned north into a dry California basin and never came back. The Salton Sea is what it left behind.

The hole that did it was cut on purpose. A bankrupt irrigation company needed a new intake before the next growing season, so in 1904 its chief engineer opened the bank of one of the largest rivers in North America, aimed it at a basin sixty metres below sea level, and installed nothing that could close it again. Record flows came in January 1905. By August the cut had widened from seventeen metres to more than ninety, water was pouring through at up to 100,000 cubic feet per second, and the new sea was rising by half a foot a day. It took the Southern Pacific Railroad two years, four dams and three weeks of rock trains dumping stone day and night to shut it.