January 9, 2024 • 43 mins
Located in southern Riverside and northern Imperial counties, the Salton Sea is California's largest lake. Although large seas have cyclically formed and dried over historic time due to natural flooding from the Colorado River, the current sea formed as the result of an accident during canal construction. And, ever since that moment, humans have been trying to figure out what to do next.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as old ways so
much for tuning in here. In twenty twenty four, we
have returned with a bit of a follow up episode.
Shout out to our super producer, the main man, mister
Max Salt and c Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Shout out to the Hoover Dam. Shout out to the
Hoover Dam that goes out there.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
You're gonna you got you shout into the damn and
the damn shouts back.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It sure does. Oh my gosh, I am I.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Be called salty boy? Yeah, course, Well that's what we
talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Salinity and that's Max, that's what Well, that's what we
call you when we're just texting without you. I'm Ben Bullen.
Here is the one and only mister Noel Brown. And
as you may recall Ridiculous Historians when we when we
did our recent episode series about the Hoover Dam, one
(01:19):
thing we continually returned to is a strange hm we
could call it a fun little accident sarcastically that went
on to change the Southwest. It's called the Sultan Sea.
And Noel, you have have have you been out to
the Sultan Sea.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I haven't, but I have seen the movie The Sultan
Sea starring jeez Val Kilmer, and at the setting is
the Sultan Sea, and it's very much the kind of
Sultan Sea that you also will Sultan see depicted the
Grand Theft Auto Door. It it wasn't really but thank you.
(02:00):
You know, there's that character, I think his name's Trevor.
He's sort of the like the he's a real salty dog.
He represents sort of that kind of methy, sort of
grizzled element. Yeah, in that game, and it is an
explorable part of the map, and it's not called the
Sultans I can't remember what it's called in the game,
(02:20):
but it very much is based on that, and it
is sort of like this weird, kind of creepy ghost town.
Like it it was meant to be some sort of
resorty kind of exactly, but that's right exactly. But it
is a very sad and scary place and that's also
what it's like in the film. But it didn't start
(02:41):
that way. And oftentimes, you know, when we see things
like abandoned malls, for example, or abandoned theme parks, there's
a certain extra creep factor that goes along when something
that was once tended with care and treated like it
was gonna be this beautiful thing for all to enjoy
and then it just kind of abandoned. But those remnants
(03:02):
remain of what once was meant to be a place
where children would play or people would water ski and
hang out with their families and have picnics.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, it's dystopian indeed. And to be clear, folks, when
we're saying salt and sea, we're talking about a specific place.
We're not talking about salt and the sea that.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Dultan has anything to do with it.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I think the name is just a geographical but it
turns out that salt is a big part of the story.
So it's very easy to make that mistake. But I'm
glad you you nip that one in the bud right
off the rip. But we found out about this again,
we'd all been aware of it, but from our wonderful
tour guide at the Hoover Dam, where there's a yeah,
that's right, who was a believe an employee of the
(03:46):
what's it called. There's a name of like sort of
land reclamation correct and their job is to deal with
watersheds and all of that stuff in the way water
resources are used in the south Southwest. Yeah, they don't
care what happens on the East Ghost and a shout
out to you, Hoover, mataf you're tuning in. That was
very clear in our conversations. The Sultan Sea is going
(04:08):
to be familiar to anybody who lives in or around California.
It is, through pure accident and misadventure, California's largest lake.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
And we know that the basin has been home to
a cyclical rise and fall of different bodies of water,
pretty much due to the Colorado rivers propensity for flooding
and the uh.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, the river is of course what is harnessed by.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah. And the Sultan Sea was formed in its current
iteration pretty recently in the Grand Scheme of things. Back
in nineteen oh five, Colorado River floodwater breached a canal.
We mentioned this in the Hoover series and flowed into
what was called the Sultan Sink's It's like how a
(04:59):
poetkemon evolves. It's the Sultan Sink when there's not water.
It's the Sultan Sea when the Colorado River has a
bad day.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
And it has reached his final form, so it's it's
a ground Pokemon with not water, but then it comes
a water ground hybrid Pokemon.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Don't talk about Pokemon with me around, I'll go, well,
got to get them all.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
I guess there's a two thirty eight on Pokemon Crystal.
One time the two fifty and then the battery inside
of it died. As an adult I was doing this.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Pokemon Go, by the way, is a surveillance skim.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I just have to say it, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But it's one of those things where it's just so fun.
I willingly give up my data for the privilege of
catching a I can't even think of the name of
a Pokemon. Let's say, a wild snore lax in my backyard.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
There is just a lot. There are a lot of them,
and there's only one salt and sea this time around.
Historic evidence and geological studies show that the Colorado River
has created something like the Sultan Sea numerous times over
the past thousands of years. The first lake to arise
(06:08):
occurs in about seven hundred CE, and this is because
the Colorado River shifted its course due to silt, which
is also the silt as part of why the Hoover
Dam was built.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I believe that was called Lake Coahuela Kahuila. I'll go
with that. Yeah, seven hundred AD. And according to the
Sultan Sea Authority, the present day Sultan Sea is that
body of water that occupies the Sultan Basin. But to
your point, Ben, there have been many that came before.
The ancient evidence or geologic evidence of the moving shoreline
(06:46):
does indicate that Lake Kohila occupied that basin until just
around three hundred years ago.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
So people lived and died there.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It wasn't a prefermanent thing in their experience.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
And then from eighteen twenty four to nineteen four the
Colorado River starts to flood that salt and basin and
it happens the flooding no less than eight times. In
eighteen forty, for example, floodwaters created a salt lake that
was the measured three quarters of a mile long and
about half a mile wide. And then in June of
(07:20):
eighteen ninety one, another overflow of the Colorado River created
a lake thirty miles long and ten miles wide.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oof For everybody listening who is not in the United States,
that is a big lake. You know about the vest
leaves that, yeah, because we'll do anything not to use
the metric system, and we want to give credit where
it's due, want to shout out. I don't know about you, guys,
but I love learning about specific repositories of expertise and knowledge.
(07:52):
So with great acclaim, we have to thank the Sultan
Sea Authority, which is a real thing and shock full,
dare I say, overflowing with resources and research about this,
about this somewhat unique erstwhile body of water there again,
gone again.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Erstwhile on Fargo.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
You guys noticed that you guys watched Fargo whenever they
do the next time or previously, they say erstwhile, Oh nice,
because I guess that's sort of a Midwestern.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
It's cool, it's just clever.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That show really pays a lot of attention to detail,
and if you haven't watched it in the new season,
is pretty spectacular, dare I say, very triggering for some folks.
That deals with a lot of topics and depictions of abuse,
you know, domestic violence and such, so treadlight, but we're.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Talking about ecological abuse. That's like, you need to talk
about silt. When we got to talk about the silt,
you haven't thought of the silt folks. So is the
true noal that no one will ever know for sure
how many times the saltan scenk has becomeless sultancy like
(09:02):
I think. We know it's at least eight times, but
we don't know how far back this phenomenon goes. We
we mainly know the time that humans messed.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
It up, that's right, Yeah, and that was specifically, you know,
involving the Hoover Dam. The construction of the Hoover Dam
while a fantastic feat of engineering, and you know the
power of science to tame nature and harness, you know,
the wilds of a planet Earth, you know, to the
(09:35):
benefit of humankind.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Things can go a little wrong.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
You know, from time to time there are byproducts and
let's just call it collateral damage can occur when such
a massive undertaking is undertaken.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
There we go love it, yes, because humans. Humans can
be accused of many things over the course of history,
but they can't be accused of lacking ambition even when
they should. So these these heavy silt loads become an
issue when the California Development Company says, look at this thing,
(10:13):
look at the Inland Valley. We could grow so much
food here. All we have to do is sweet talk
the Colorado River into feeding future crops.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Come on, you know you want to feed those crops.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah. In nineteen oh one, they start digging these canals
from the river meant to go through the Imperial Valley.
But they again not to be two Dennis Reynolds here.
They hadn't thought of the silt, and.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Just really quickly, if anyone doesn't remember from high school geology,
isn't silt just kind of very fine particulate matter that
is carried by river current specifically, and it can, of course,
you know, form deposits that can you know, clog up
things and correct cause all kinds of problems, but also
move the location of shorelines over time.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, mud, little bits of sand, this this agglomerates, you know.
This is actually this similar to the reason that you
can't put coffee grounds into your disposal and your sink.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
It'll be okay for a minute, then over time, and
I've had I have died on this hill with roommates
who swear it's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It's nope.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
It might be okay for even a couple of months,
but if you keep doing it, it's just gonna build
up and like it gets ground more every time it
gets you know, you run the disposal, but that just
creates the stuff that builds up on the blades, and
over time will eventually cause that thing to grind to
a halt.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
And so so these poor folks at the California Development Company,
I'm kidding, they're quite well off. They said, dang, it
didn't it didn't work. We have to try to fix
it somehow. And this led to a feedback loop of
bad decisions and mistakes that ultimate led to what we
call the Sultan Sea today and later led to the
(12:04):
creation of what we call the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
And ben really quickly, and I just want to correct myself.
I think I may have gotten order of operations a
little off the mark a minute ago. It wasn't the
Hoover Dam that caused this problem. The Hoover Dam was
one of the solutions to dealing with this human made
issue that sprung up around the Sultan Sea from previous
attempts to dig irrigation canals from the Colorado River. Just so, yeah,
(12:29):
it's the best band aid that America could come up with,
I mean, but it still did spring forth from issues
surrounding human intervention.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Absolutely, absolutely, And the Sultan Sea is different from a
lot of other bodies of water in the United States
and indeed the world, because there's no real place for
the water to go over land, it would have to evaporate.
It's what's called an indorict lake e h EIC. So
(13:03):
because the waters in the Salt and Sea have no
it's like a crowded concert hall with no exit.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
O's got to have those exits, fire code.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
They've got no exit at all. These poor particles water.
At least they have no runoff opportunity, which means they
have two choices. They can either evaporate or they can
sink into the ground. And this leads to a very
high salinity level, a very high amount of salt in
the salt and sea.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife say that the
Sultan Sea has been maintained by irrigation runoff coming from
the Imperial in Coachella Valleys and nearby rivers since it's
very formation, and that those salinity levels, those levels of
salt are currently more than fifty percent higher than ocean
(13:59):
waters than the water of the Pacific specifically, and those
levels continue to go up as time goes on. The
salt in the Sultan Sea is sort of the culprit
at play here regarding what we could, with very little
hyperbole referred to as an ecological disaster, and we're going
(14:20):
to get to that. But for a time, it was
kind of awesome, you know, it was like this this oasis, like,
you know, a beautiful little ocean, you know, a contained
ocean that didn't go off into the horizon, that was
(14:41):
just right there and therefore could be used for things
like recreation.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And max if we could, could we get some like
retro as, you know, maybe forties fifties resort music, swinging y, Yeah,
picture it this way, lay.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Back, So just use the music from the Adolpho Sax
episode Sweet Saxiphying right here.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, make it sexy.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So picture this, Someone says, Dolly, and I know the
land on the coast is expensive for vacations, but we
have a happening scene in inland. We have a sea
you see, all our own. This was like a hot
spot for tourists, for people who own a boat but
(15:23):
honestly cannot afford marina fees in more expensive areas.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
That's a good point, because it wasn't like at this
point it was sort of a place for the halves,
but maybe the haves, not.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Quite as much as the top tier halves. You know.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
It was almost more like having a condo rather than
like a mansion, or like owning a timeshare rather than
you know, some sort of like beachside you know, get away,
you know, for your summer home. So it did create
this sort of community that was very attractive to developers.
And that was also largely because those high salt level
(16:00):
you know what happens when you've got salty waters, things
float better.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
So people with boats.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Were using it because it was able to make speedboats
go faster. And I believe there were some records that
were set, you know, using speedboats in the waters of
the Saltan Sea during the first half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, it's more fun to operate a boat on this
buoyant brine.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
There. We go too much alliteration, but we'll keep it.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So in the nineteen fifties, the California Department of Fish
and Game gets into the mix and they say, hey,
let's jush this up a little bit more. Let's get
people to come not just to play around on their
boats or to have a lake side vacation. Let's also
draw in the fishing crowds, So we're going to stock
(16:49):
this lake. Stocking a lake. This happens all the time
in Georgia, which has no natural lakes as a state.
It's a very weird fact, but you're welcome. The process
of stocking a lake means that you take a bunch
of different kinds of fish that people like to fish
for recreationally. You put enough in that even someone who's
(17:11):
kind of bad at fishing is almost guaranteed to catch one.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's almost like those wildlife resorts where they have like
penned in kind of deer that really have nowhere to go.
So it's it sort of lowers the sporting quot just
a little bit, like it's it's a little bit like
a shooting fish in a very large barrel. But you know,
it was, it was popular. And also like deep deep
sea fishing is certainly more expensive and you can't you
(17:39):
can fish off a pier, of course, but you're limited,
you know, in terms of coastal areas where you can fish,
you know, for people that maybe don't have the money
to you know, own a trawler or whatever.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
They're really crap.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Those things are called that can go deep sea fishing,
so you know, since this is a lake, you can
fish right off the side.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And this is where a guy named Pen of Fillips
enters our story. It's the end of the nineteen fifties
and our buddy Pen is developing property. He says, look,
this is going to be the next big thing. This
happens all the time in real estate. People will take
out of the way land and attempt to make it,
(18:17):
you know, kind of like a resort, a live laugh, love,
a little all in one area. And so our buddy
Pen buys thousands of acres of land. He gets involved
in speculation. He's also selling lots of land around the
western shore of the Salt and Sea. And he says,
what I'm going to do really is I'm going to
(18:38):
be like Romulus and Remiss founding this great civilization. But
this is going to be Sultan City and it's going
to be tourism, and I want people. Basically, what you
want when you're building these kind of things. You want
a large traveling, seasonal population, but you want people to
live there year round. You want to make it good
(18:59):
enough that it becomes like a mall people never leave.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Well, you know, the West coast of the United States
is sort of seasonless largely, so you know, the weather
kind of maintains pretty pretty consistently throughout the year.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
But this would definitely have been sort of a getaway,
could have been considered a getaway for folks that maybe
lived more in the city, you know, more like in
Los Angeles or in the valley perhaps, or in some
of the surrounding part like it's on or like I
think I hear Big Bear Lake come up a lot
as far as like a place that the people in
LA like to vacation to.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
But you start to.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
See the intention springing up around this development, you know,
with streets named things like Seaview Avenue and Sea Missed
Place and all of these very evocative kind of names.
And again a lot of this information is coming from
a combination of the Kiri Picone article on that all
(19:55):
that's interesting and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
But so you start to see the groundwork being laid
by Penn Phillips' efforts, and it starts to seem like
this is going to transform into what he had envision
but then, all of a sudden, as though blessed with
some sort of secret knowledge, Phillips ditches the whole thing
(20:19):
in nineteen sixty and we don't we still don't really know,
Like what tipped him off. Was he talking to, you know,
ecologists and environmental experts, and he sort of probably got
the tip that maybe this was not going to progress
in the way that he had hoped.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, I was looking at this and probably, although it's
tough to assign motivation and prescients, there are a couple
of possibilities. Maybe things just went upside down for him financially,
very like sooner than a thought. And or it may
have been a situation where he got the amount of
(20:57):
money that he wanted and then handed it off, like
he may have not known what was about to happen,
but he In either case, he ghost in nineteen sixty,
and Sultan City kind of becomes a ghost, like those
massive towns that are built on real estate speculation in
the nation of China. There's if you went to Sultan
(21:19):
City after nineteen sixty, you would see something that looked undone,
like the developers in a video game had not quite
gotten to that part of the map. There's like, there
are a couple homes, there was a sewage system. They had,
you know, as he said, they had the QTT names
for different streets. But it started to go downhill almost
(21:40):
immediately because there wasn't new investment coming in. And this
gave it that dystopian fallout esque vibe that we were
foreshadowing earlier. And to be clear, people were still living there,
just not as many as Penn had originally hoped. And
so if we fast forward to the night teen seventies,
(22:01):
we get to the real ecological disaster. The bill starts
to come do and tourists don't love unpleasant things.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
No, And we talked about how the salt levels kind
of were on the rise and all of this shoreline
flooding was also on the rise. You had farm farming
communities nearby, you know, I mean if you go outside
of LA you know, places like Modesto and you know
a little bit further out from Los Angeles proper, it
is super rural and a lot of farming going on
(22:33):
out there. You know, things like oranges and various crops,
you know, avocado, whatever. But they have to be fertilized,
and there were times where regulations surrounding you know, what
kind of fertilizer could be used and how it had
to be dealt with were not nearly as strict as
they are today. So you had a lot of runoff
from these nearby farms causing increasing imbalances in the kind
(22:58):
of chemical makeup of the waters of the salt and sea.
Pair that with that rising salinity and you start to
get these massive fish kills with like fish bones, skeletons
kind of piling up on the shore. A lot of
those fish that had been stocked, you know, the various species,
I believe, including let's see, we had croaker corvina, Yeah,
(23:23):
something like I think sargo. I'm not a fish scientist,
but those were several of the species. They just began
to die off, and it was only I think a
few of the more resilient species that even stuck around
at all.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Right, and this included some endangered species like the desert pupfish.
Coupled with this, there are a number of biblical level storms.
If you had a resort barely holding on, guess what,
there's an act of God coming your way. It's not
in your favor, So a lot of people were forced
(23:55):
to pull out because the numbers just weren't working as
an investment. If you fast forward now, you'll see, as
you said, just a few very resilient fish species surviving
for now. And yeah, and just like just like the
Marinas a few years back, these things are barely holding on.
(24:20):
This gets even worse in two thousand and three. There's
something called the Quantification Settlement Agreement. Shout out to the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife if you'd like to
learn more. Its street name is the QSA. Basically, it's
a covenant between states that share the Hoover Dam and
the Colorado River. And we know California has historically been
(24:45):
the least favorite state in this agreement because they tend
to use more water than the originally agreed amount or limit.
And we also have to say, in California's defense, it
is a country all its own, Like if you look
at the GDP of California, it's a huge country. You know,
(25:08):
it's quite unique in that regard. And for a long
period of time, everybody just sort of made do and
they said, Okay, we'll figure it out next year, we'll
keep kicking the can down the length of this dam
because Nevada and Nevada and Arizona never used their full
quota of water, so people were just sliding the leftover
(25:33):
to California. But problem is, not every place out west
is like the Saltan city idea. There are thriving, huge populations,
huge cities that in some cases you could argue should
not exist. Sorry, Las Vegas, but shout out to you.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Just slap there in the middle of the California desert,
you know, by the mafia. The founding of Las Vegas
is fascinating, as we discovered when we were out there
not too long ago. But all of this to say
that this QSA imposes some pretty serious water conservation measures
that ultimately have the unintended consequence of drying up the
(26:11):
salt and sea. And in doing that, again, I'm not
a water expert here, but it caused the salinity to
rise even further as the sea was drying up. And
I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe Matter or
Max you have an idea.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Yeah, So what I got through this research, and I
mean shout out to the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife because the right up on. This is very long.
If we did the right up alone, it would be
like an entire episode. But basically the gist of it is,
there's a ton of there's a ton of salt in
the salt sea, but the water getting dumped into the
(26:50):
salt and sea is fresh water, so dilute it down.
But so as California was getting less and less water
because you know, Nevada and Arizona needed more less water
going to the crops to run off, and those parts
about becoming more efficient, unintended consequences. Basically, there's less fresh
(27:10):
water getting dumped into this very high salt count and
the water can't go anywhere, so what happens to it?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So it evaporates or it goes into the ground, which
causes the salinity to naturally increase. And the problem is
that the wildlife in this area is not the kind
of wildlife that has evolved to exist in these changing circumstances.
The Sultancy in its current iteration for Everybody Playing Along
(27:39):
at Home has only existed for around a century, which
is very short term in the life span of bodies
of water, and in just that amount of time, since
it was the only show in town, ecologically, it became
a huge resource for things like migratory birds, for resident
animal populations like our pal the pupfish, some endangered species.
(28:04):
So because the because the rest of California was getting
developed at such a hectic pace, they were losing wetlands
and the Sultan Sea became the replacement. It became the
we have wetlands at home. It's like the wish version
of a wetland on et sea. So these these birds
(28:27):
in the North American continent need a pit stop, especially
if they're migratory, and the Sultan Sea becomes that. We
just don't think it will last very long. It's an
unsustainable situation because the marine animals are not going to
be able to survive that increasing salinity. There's a reason
(28:49):
another very briny sea is called the Dead Sea. Super
great for boats, not super great floating, yeah, not super
great for freshwater fish though, and this leads us to
the next turn in the story. The demise of the
(29:09):
Sultan Sea had consequences beyond the water itself. As the
sea declined, we see things. We see things become increasingly dystopian.
The human population that used to be kind of like
(29:30):
novou Riche aspirational, middle class, upper middle class tourists. They leave,
and the folks who remain there just like the Just
like the salt that remains in the Sultan Sea, it
gets weirder and weirder with each passing year. The vibe
becomes strange.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Right, more and more dystopian. I'm a Newburger, writing for CNBC,
had this to say. The vision for Saltan City was clear,
a bustling resort community along the crystal blue waters the
Sultan Sea. The city's reality is more grim. Instead of
a vacation spot, it feels like a post apocalyptic ghost town.
Most of the homes were demolished or never built. The
(30:09):
palm trees are stumps, and the sea, while beautiful, is toxic.
And you know, she actually interviewed Frank Ruez from the
Audubon Society. The Audubon Society has a Sultan Sea program,
and he said people here used to fish, swim, bring
their boats. They went from living in paradise to living
(30:32):
in hell.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, and that is not hyperbole. This also this also
affects the surrounding land. Imperial County remains one of the
poorest counties in the state of California, and there's a
problem with the smell. That's right, fans are always sunny.
We're doing that Dennis Reynolds joke because it works. We're
(30:54):
not going to give you the full quote because we're
a family show. But the smell became a huge issue,
and it's also a teachable moment for our friends in
Utah who are worried about the stench of the Great
Salt Lake. It's because of the chemical changes. You know,
the dust is blowing over the dry lake beds as
(31:16):
the salt and sea slowly evaporates, and that means you're
getting hydrogen sulfide. You're also getting dangerous stuff like arsenic
and selenium. And people who live there, honestly, people who
are affected by it. Many families cannot afford to move,
so they just have to put up with this horrible
smell and possible health effects in the long term.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Right and Ruiz Frank Ruis from the Audubon said, it
makes the point that we see happen all the time
with things like this. If the sea were next to
Los Angeles, it would have been fixed long ago. But
it's next to poor communities and they don't have the
political leverage. There are a lot of Latino families that
live in this area, and it is just they just
(31:59):
don't have the clout and representation to do something about it.
Politicians in Los Angeles are concerned more with things directly
affecting the residents of Los Angeles, and these folks seem
to be up Poop Creek without a paddle.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, they're in the salt without the shaker for sure.
And let's go to Robert Schettler, who is a spokesperson
for the Imperial Irrigation District or IID. Schetler says, look,
let's stay optimistic. Not all is lost. It is a
huge problem. It does need attention yesterday, but we are
(32:41):
happy to see that there are more. There are indications
of positive efforts like small, small scale air quality mitigation plans,
trying to reinstitute some vegetation that would help also prevent erosion,
help some of that water go to a better use.
(33:01):
And this all goes to the big question that people
have been asking for decades and decades now and perhaps
years in the past when earlier iterations of the sea evaporated.
Is there a way to save the salt and sea?
Back to our friend from all this interesting Kiri says, Look,
(33:22):
people are trying. There's a there's a ten year plan
that came out pretty recently in twenty eighteen where California's
Natural Resource Agency. That's right, folks, there are a lot
of like alphabet government agencies working on this. Our pals
at the Natural Resource Agency said, look, over the next decade,
we're going to make thirty thousand acres of habitat. We're
(33:45):
going to suppress this dust that makes everything look so
mad max on the lake shore, and then we're going
to import new water. Nol importing new water. That's that's
a that's a dicey one.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Well, Ben, didn't this come up in a story that
we've covered a couple of times on stuff they don't
want you to know. That's right, And they were for
a time, I believe, doing just that, like importing. Maybe
it wasn't that they were importing water to dilute the salinity,
but it was the kind of thing that would maybe
work as a quick stopgap measure, but like over a
(34:21):
long period of time, just isn't tenable.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Right, The quest for a better band aid, just like
the Hoover Dam. At the end of twenty twenty, only
seven hundred and fifty five acres of dust suppression projects
had started. They originally wanted there to be something like
one thousand, seven hundred and fifty and no habitat projects
have been started either. So again, you know, shout out
(34:46):
Sam Cook, shout out Ben Sale, A change is gonna come.
The question is will the change come in time. Everybody
knows California is way behind schedule in any restoration efforts
the Sultan Sea. But there are a lot of very good,
very smart people working on this. They just have to
(35:07):
work through red tape. They have to work through all
these stakeholders, all these bureaucracies, and it's increasingly difficult to
ask for more water in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
It's right, and it's not just water resource management agencies
that are getting involved. There are also folks from the
state's Energy Commission providing funding to various energy companies to
look into lithium alternatives in order to grow geothermal development
and lithium recovery in order to maybe provide clean energy
(35:41):
and create some.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Local jobs there.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, exactly, and we have talked about this on our
peer shows. Stuff they don't want you to know right now.
Companies are dumping billions into what they're calling Lithium Valley.
There is a quite ambitious vision, similar to that of
Penn Phillips all those decades ago, to build a new
(36:06):
tech forward community out in this area and maybe at
some point the fix the smell. A lot of this
is coming from a San Diego based company called Energy
Source Minerals.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
And to your point, Ben, it's sort of like the
focus is maybe shifted on things that could potentially be
job creating and money making, so the ecological issue is
maybe taken a little bit of a back seat, but
it's not completely out of mind.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Ruiz, who he talked about earlier, who.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Is the director of the Audubon Society's Sultan Sea Initiative,
had this to say about it. We have a moral
obligation to look after the wildlife and communities affected by
the Sultan Sea. I'd love to see the lake full
of water, but it's not feasible. The solution is for communities,
water districts, and environ mental groups to find common ground
(37:01):
and protect it. And oftentimes this is me that common
ground comes in the forms of things that can make
money for people, and that can be seen as like
the rising tide that perhaps raises the water level of
the Sultan Sea. That cannot be in a society that
is very much reliant on commerce the number one priority.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It has to be just sort of a byproduct of
all the other stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Unfortunately, that's where we get to the idea of conflicting
interest of so called stakeholders. There's also another question. Maybe
this is where we where we end it now. It's
a question for everybody tuning in, everybody who lives at
the Sultan Sea or is doing the work to try
to save this quite eccentric body of water. What if
(37:51):
we got the origin story wrong? What if the Sultan
Sea should just be allowed to come and go. There
are folks like Loggie who argue that, hey, maybe the
sea just happens over thousands of years, probably before humans.
To be honest, this sea has come and gone. Perhaps
(38:13):
it's its formation and its current iteration was inevitable, and
that famous canal breach back in nineteen oh five just
sort of move the timeline right. And if that is
the case, then should people spend all this time and
effort to save a sea that just sort of is
an indoor outdoor cat Ecologically it comes and goes, it
(38:37):
comes and goes, Oh.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
My goodness, I don't think. No, no, it's a good question.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
And you know, and is you know, sometimes there are
byproducts of naturally occurring processes, you know, on the planet
that maybe shouldn't be messed with, and that once they're
messed with, then that can trigger a new timeline of
kind of a dominant effect of negative consequences. So it
(39:03):
could be that because of the intervention of human beings
in the first place, is what triggered a lot of
this really nasty fallout. So that does beg the question,
like to what this person you quoted ben as saying,
maybe that would be true if it hadn't have been
messed with in the first place, But now that it
has been messed with, it's become a problem that does
(39:25):
need some level of addressing, or it's just gonna get worse,
or that part of the country they're just gonna have
to like pull those over the whole thing and start
from scratch, you know, fill it in with concrete or something.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I don't know what would happen. What are the alternatives?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I mean, it's anybody's game, you know. And look, it
sounds like we're possibly taking a hit out on the
good people in the assaulted area. We are absolutely not
got to tell you, folks, we are not a crew
of folks who have spent a lot of time in
the desert. So I think it's fair to say when
(40:00):
folks like us venture out west, especially to this part
of California, all that open space kind of puts the
zap on us. It's like when Max met Montana and
saw why they call it sky Country.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
It's big.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
This scale is amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
I remember I remember.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Driving you and the gang out just the Hoover Dam
and we were all somewhat speechless by the immensity.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Of the of the area.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah, I think super producer Paul Mission Controlled dechead of
Stuff that I want you to know, said, it almost
felt not real, like you were looking at something that
was created in a video game or something, because of
the vastness of it and just the epic, you know,
expanse of it all that we're not used to seeing that.
You know, U must you live out there. We're not
(40:46):
used to seeing that in real life. We're its kind
of used to seeing recreations of it, So it almost
feels like you're in sort of an immersive virtual reality
kind of situation, which is pretty weird to say, but
it's it's true. I was hit the same way by
it that it had this uncanny valley kind of vibe
to it.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And there's a beauty to it, you know, And there's
a beauty, there's the ambiguity. There are many questions left
to answer about the Sultan Sea. One thing is for sure.
The clock is ticking. Perhaps the origin story is ridiculous,
but it has also inspired a great deal of human ingenuity,
(41:24):
and we can't wait to see what sort of solutions
are on the way in the future. We also can't
thank you enough for tuning in, and thank you to
our super producer and research associate for today's episode, mister
Max Williams. Guys, I forget to tell you I sent
over the holiday, by which I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Today before we record it.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I dropped our old pal Jonathan Strickland a quick line,
asked him if you wanted to be on the show,
wished him a happy New Year and maybe he will
deign to return. I have figured out how to tell
him he's got some competition now with the Puzzler.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Oh, the Puzzler.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
I really do think we should like pit them against
one another in a quiz slash puzzle off.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, it'll be for the ages.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
But you know, we can't thank you enough for tuning in,
but we surely will try. And we also like to
thank everyone else that makes the show possible, of course,
including Max Williams, super producer slash research associate Alex Williams
who composed this theme, Chris frostiotis here in spirit, and
Eves Jeff Coates wandering the wide world of podcasts.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
I'd like to thank Tom Waits sultan Ce feels like
his vibe. Oh yeah, he was going to go on
the show with us, but he only accepts payment in
rusted nineteen fifty seven Chevy parts. It's true, which we
didn't have handy. But Tom, if you're hearing, we hope
you enjoyed this one as well.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
I think Tom listens to the show. He only listens
to stuff on like an old Victrola.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Right right, and he has to have a busted, busted
couple tubes that he can scatter around. Just so, please
tune in later this week we are going to explore
a complex, strange phenomenon of yesteryear. You may have asked yourselves, folks, Hey,
(43:18):
why do so many pictures of historical figures in childhood?
Why do they seem to be wearing dot dot dot dresses.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
And our short pants? What is the little Lord fault Leroy?
Look the Buster Brown. We'll get to it on the
next episode of Ridiculous History. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(43:49):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as old ways so
much for tuning in here. In twenty twenty four, we
have returned with a bit of a follow up episode.
Shout out to our super producer, the main man, mister
Max Salt and c Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Shout out to the Hoover Dam. Shout out to the
Hoover Dam that goes out there.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
You're gonna you got you shout into the damn and
the damn shouts back.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It sure does. Oh my gosh, I am I.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Be called salty boy? Yeah, course, Well that's what we
talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Salinity and that's Max, that's what Well, that's what we
call you when we're just texting without you. I'm Ben Bullen.
Here is the one and only mister Noel Brown. And
as you may recall Ridiculous Historians when we when we
did our recent episode series about the Hoover Dam, one
(01:19):
thing we continually returned to is a strange hm we
could call it a fun little accident sarcastically that went
on to change the Southwest. It's called the Sultan Sea.
And Noel, you have have have you been out to
the Sultan Sea.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I haven't, but I have seen the movie The Sultan
Sea starring jeez Val Kilmer, and at the setting is
the Sultan Sea, and it's very much the kind of
Sultan Sea that you also will Sultan see depicted the
Grand Theft Auto Door. It it wasn't really but thank you.
(02:00):
You know, there's that character, I think his name's Trevor.
He's sort of the like the he's a real salty dog.
He represents sort of that kind of methy, sort of
grizzled element. Yeah, in that game, and it is an
explorable part of the map, and it's not called the
Sultans I can't remember what it's called in the game,
(02:20):
but it very much is based on that, and it
is sort of like this weird, kind of creepy ghost town.
Like it it was meant to be some sort of
resorty kind of exactly, but that's right exactly. But it
is a very sad and scary place and that's also
what it's like in the film. But it didn't start
(02:41):
that way. And oftentimes, you know, when we see things
like abandoned malls, for example, or abandoned theme parks, there's
a certain extra creep factor that goes along when something
that was once tended with care and treated like it
was gonna be this beautiful thing for all to enjoy
and then it just kind of abandoned. But those remnants
(03:02):
remain of what once was meant to be a place
where children would play or people would water ski and
hang out with their families and have picnics.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, it's dystopian indeed. And to be clear, folks, when
we're saying salt and sea, we're talking about a specific place.
We're not talking about salt and the sea that.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Dultan has anything to do with it.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I think the name is just a geographical but it
turns out that salt is a big part of the story.
So it's very easy to make that mistake. But I'm
glad you you nip that one in the bud right
off the rip. But we found out about this again,
we'd all been aware of it, but from our wonderful
tour guide at the Hoover Dam, where there's a yeah,
that's right, who was a believe an employee of the
(03:46):
what's it called. There's a name of like sort of
land reclamation correct and their job is to deal with
watersheds and all of that stuff in the way water
resources are used in the south Southwest. Yeah, they don't
care what happens on the East Ghost and a shout
out to you, Hoover, mataf you're tuning in. That was
very clear in our conversations. The Sultan Sea is going
(04:08):
to be familiar to anybody who lives in or around California.
It is, through pure accident and misadventure, California's largest lake.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
And we know that the basin has been home to
a cyclical rise and fall of different bodies of water,
pretty much due to the Colorado rivers propensity for flooding
and the uh.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, the river is of course what is harnessed by.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah. And the Sultan Sea was formed in its current
iteration pretty recently in the Grand Scheme of things. Back
in nineteen oh five, Colorado River floodwater breached a canal.
We mentioned this in the Hoover series and flowed into
what was called the Sultan Sink's It's like how a
(04:59):
poetkemon evolves. It's the Sultan Sink when there's not water.
It's the Sultan Sea when the Colorado River has a
bad day.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
And it has reached his final form, so it's it's
a ground Pokemon with not water, but then it comes
a water ground hybrid Pokemon.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Don't talk about Pokemon with me around, I'll go, well,
got to get them all.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
I guess there's a two thirty eight on Pokemon Crystal.
One time the two fifty and then the battery inside
of it died. As an adult I was doing this.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Pokemon Go, by the way, is a surveillance skim.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I just have to say it, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But it's one of those things where it's just so fun.
I willingly give up my data for the privilege of
catching a I can't even think of the name of
a Pokemon. Let's say, a wild snore lax in my backyard.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
There is just a lot. There are a lot of them,
and there's only one salt and sea this time around.
Historic evidence and geological studies show that the Colorado River
has created something like the Sultan Sea numerous times over
the past thousands of years. The first lake to arise
(06:08):
occurs in about seven hundred CE, and this is because
the Colorado River shifted its course due to silt, which
is also the silt as part of why the Hoover
Dam was built.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I believe that was called Lake Coahuela Kahuila. I'll go
with that. Yeah, seven hundred AD. And according to the
Sultan Sea Authority, the present day Sultan Sea is that
body of water that occupies the Sultan Basin. But to
your point, Ben, there have been many that came before.
The ancient evidence or geologic evidence of the moving shoreline
(06:46):
does indicate that Lake Kohila occupied that basin until just
around three hundred years ago.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
So people lived and died there.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It wasn't a prefermanent thing in their experience.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
And then from eighteen twenty four to nineteen four the
Colorado River starts to flood that salt and basin and
it happens the flooding no less than eight times. In
eighteen forty, for example, floodwaters created a salt lake that
was the measured three quarters of a mile long and
about half a mile wide. And then in June of
(07:20):
eighteen ninety one, another overflow of the Colorado River created
a lake thirty miles long and ten miles wide.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Oof For everybody listening who is not in the United States,
that is a big lake. You know about the vest
leaves that, yeah, because we'll do anything not to use
the metric system, and we want to give credit where
it's due, want to shout out. I don't know about you, guys,
but I love learning about specific repositories of expertise and knowledge.
(07:52):
So with great acclaim, we have to thank the Sultan
Sea Authority, which is a real thing and shock full,
dare I say, overflowing with resources and research about this,
about this somewhat unique erstwhile body of water there again,
gone again.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Erstwhile on Fargo.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
You guys noticed that you guys watched Fargo whenever they
do the next time or previously, they say erstwhile, Oh nice,
because I guess that's sort of a Midwestern.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
It's cool, it's just clever.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That show really pays a lot of attention to detail,
and if you haven't watched it in the new season,
is pretty spectacular, dare I say, very triggering for some folks.
That deals with a lot of topics and depictions of abuse,
you know, domestic violence and such, so treadlight, but we're.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Talking about ecological abuse. That's like, you need to talk
about silt. When we got to talk about the silt,
you haven't thought of the silt folks. So is the
true noal that no one will ever know for sure
how many times the saltan scenk has becomeless sultancy like
(09:02):
I think. We know it's at least eight times, but
we don't know how far back this phenomenon goes. We
we mainly know the time that humans messed.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
It up, that's right, Yeah, and that was specifically, you know,
involving the Hoover Dam. The construction of the Hoover Dam
while a fantastic feat of engineering, and you know the
power of science to tame nature and harness, you know,
the wilds of a planet Earth, you know, to the
(09:35):
benefit of humankind.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Things can go a little wrong.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
You know, from time to time there are byproducts and
let's just call it collateral damage can occur when such
a massive undertaking is undertaken.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
There we go love it, yes, because humans. Humans can
be accused of many things over the course of history,
but they can't be accused of lacking ambition even when
they should. So these these heavy silt loads become an
issue when the California Development Company says, look at this thing,
(10:13):
look at the Inland Valley. We could grow so much
food here. All we have to do is sweet talk
the Colorado River into feeding future crops.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Come on, you know you want to feed those crops.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah. In nineteen oh one, they start digging these canals
from the river meant to go through the Imperial Valley.
But they again not to be two Dennis Reynolds here.
They hadn't thought of the silt, and.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Just really quickly, if anyone doesn't remember from high school geology,
isn't silt just kind of very fine particulate matter that
is carried by river current specifically, and it can, of course,
you know, form deposits that can you know, clog up
things and correct cause all kinds of problems, but also
move the location of shorelines over time.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, mud, little bits of sand, this this agglomerates, you know.
This is actually this similar to the reason that you
can't put coffee grounds into your disposal and your sink.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
It'll be okay for a minute, then over time, and
I've had I have died on this hill with roommates
who swear it's fine.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It's nope.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
It might be okay for even a couple of months,
but if you keep doing it, it's just gonna build
up and like it gets ground more every time it
gets you know, you run the disposal, but that just
creates the stuff that builds up on the blades, and
over time will eventually cause that thing to grind to
a halt.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
And so so these poor folks at the California Development Company,
I'm kidding, they're quite well off. They said, dang, it
didn't it didn't work. We have to try to fix
it somehow. And this led to a feedback loop of
bad decisions and mistakes that ultimate led to what we
call the Sultan Sea today and later led to the
(12:04):
creation of what we call the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
And ben really quickly, and I just want to correct myself.
I think I may have gotten order of operations a
little off the mark a minute ago. It wasn't the
Hoover Dam that caused this problem. The Hoover Dam was
one of the solutions to dealing with this human made
issue that sprung up around the Sultan Sea from previous
attempts to dig irrigation canals from the Colorado River. Just so, yeah,
(12:29):
it's the best band aid that America could come up with,
I mean, but it still did spring forth from issues
surrounding human intervention.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Absolutely, absolutely, And the Sultan Sea is different from a
lot of other bodies of water in the United States
and indeed the world, because there's no real place for
the water to go over land, it would have to evaporate.
It's what's called an indorict lake e h EIC. So
(13:03):
because the waters in the Salt and Sea have no
it's like a crowded concert hall with no exit.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
O's got to have those exits, fire code.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
They've got no exit at all. These poor particles water.
At least they have no runoff opportunity, which means they
have two choices. They can either evaporate or they can
sink into the ground. And this leads to a very
high salinity level, a very high amount of salt in
the salt and sea.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife say that the
Sultan Sea has been maintained by irrigation runoff coming from
the Imperial in Coachella Valleys and nearby rivers since it's
very formation, and that those salinity levels, those levels of
salt are currently more than fifty percent higher than ocean
(13:59):
waters than the water of the Pacific specifically, and those
levels continue to go up as time goes on. The
salt in the Sultan Sea is sort of the culprit
at play here regarding what we could, with very little
hyperbole referred to as an ecological disaster, and we're going
(14:20):
to get to that. But for a time, it was
kind of awesome, you know, it was like this this oasis, like,
you know, a beautiful little ocean, you know, a contained
ocean that didn't go off into the horizon, that was
(14:41):
just right there and therefore could be used for things
like recreation.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And max if we could, could we get some like
retro as, you know, maybe forties fifties resort music, swinging y, Yeah,
picture it this way, lay.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Back, So just use the music from the Adolpho Sax
episode Sweet Saxiphying right here.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, make it sexy.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So picture this, Someone says, Dolly, and I know the
land on the coast is expensive for vacations, but we
have a happening scene in inland. We have a sea
you see, all our own. This was like a hot
spot for tourists, for people who own a boat but
(15:23):
honestly cannot afford marina fees in more expensive areas.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
That's a good point, because it wasn't like at this
point it was sort of a place for the halves,
but maybe the haves, not.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Quite as much as the top tier halves. You know.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
It was almost more like having a condo rather than
like a mansion, or like owning a timeshare rather than
you know, some sort of like beachside you know, get away,
you know, for your summer home. So it did create
this sort of community that was very attractive to developers.
And that was also largely because those high salt level
(16:00):
you know what happens when you've got salty waters, things
float better.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
So people with boats.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Were using it because it was able to make speedboats
go faster. And I believe there were some records that
were set, you know, using speedboats in the waters of
the Saltan Sea during the first half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, it's more fun to operate a boat on this
buoyant brine.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
There. We go too much alliteration, but we'll keep it.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So in the nineteen fifties, the California Department of Fish
and Game gets into the mix and they say, hey,
let's jush this up a little bit more. Let's get
people to come not just to play around on their
boats or to have a lake side vacation. Let's also
draw in the fishing crowds, So we're going to stock
(16:49):
this lake. Stocking a lake. This happens all the time
in Georgia, which has no natural lakes as a state.
It's a very weird fact, but you're welcome. The process
of stocking a lake means that you take a bunch
of different kinds of fish that people like to fish
for recreationally. You put enough in that even someone who's
(17:11):
kind of bad at fishing is almost guaranteed to catch one.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's almost like those wildlife resorts where they have like
penned in kind of deer that really have nowhere to go.
So it's it sort of lowers the sporting quot just
a little bit, like it's it's a little bit like
a shooting fish in a very large barrel. But you know,
it was, it was popular. And also like deep deep
sea fishing is certainly more expensive and you can't you
(17:39):
can fish off a pier, of course, but you're limited,
you know, in terms of coastal areas where you can fish,
you know, for people that maybe don't have the money
to you know, own a trawler or whatever.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
They're really crap.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Those things are called that can go deep sea fishing,
so you know, since this is a lake, you can
fish right off the side.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And this is where a guy named Pen of Fillips
enters our story. It's the end of the nineteen fifties
and our buddy Pen is developing property. He says, look,
this is going to be the next big thing. This
happens all the time in real estate. People will take
out of the way land and attempt to make it,
(18:17):
you know, kind of like a resort, a live laugh, love,
a little all in one area. And so our buddy
Pen buys thousands of acres of land. He gets involved
in speculation. He's also selling lots of land around the
western shore of the Salt and Sea. And he says,
what I'm going to do really is I'm going to
(18:38):
be like Romulus and Remiss founding this great civilization. But
this is going to be Sultan City and it's going
to be tourism, and I want people. Basically, what you
want when you're building these kind of things. You want
a large traveling, seasonal population, but you want people to
live there year round. You want to make it good
(18:59):
enough that it becomes like a mall people never leave.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Well, you know, the West coast of the United States
is sort of seasonless largely, so you know, the weather
kind of maintains pretty pretty consistently throughout the year.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
But this would definitely have been sort of a getaway,
could have been considered a getaway for folks that maybe
lived more in the city, you know, more like in
Los Angeles or in the valley perhaps, or in some
of the surrounding part like it's on or like I
think I hear Big Bear Lake come up a lot
as far as like a place that the people in
LA like to vacation to.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
But you start to.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
See the intention springing up around this development, you know,
with streets named things like Seaview Avenue and Sea Missed
Place and all of these very evocative kind of names.
And again a lot of this information is coming from
a combination of the Kiri Picone article on that all
(19:55):
that's interesting and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
But so you start to see the groundwork being laid
by Penn Phillips' efforts, and it starts to seem like
this is going to transform into what he had envision
but then, all of a sudden, as though blessed with
some sort of secret knowledge, Phillips ditches the whole thing
(20:19):
in nineteen sixty and we don't we still don't really know,
Like what tipped him off. Was he talking to, you know,
ecologists and environmental experts, and he sort of probably got
the tip that maybe this was not going to progress
in the way that he had hoped.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, I was looking at this and probably, although it's
tough to assign motivation and prescients, there are a couple
of possibilities. Maybe things just went upside down for him financially,
very like sooner than a thought. And or it may
have been a situation where he got the amount of
(20:57):
money that he wanted and then handed it off, like
he may have not known what was about to happen,
but he In either case, he ghost in nineteen sixty,
and Sultan City kind of becomes a ghost, like those
massive towns that are built on real estate speculation in
the nation of China. There's if you went to Sultan
(21:19):
City after nineteen sixty, you would see something that looked undone,
like the developers in a video game had not quite
gotten to that part of the map. There's like, there
are a couple homes, there was a sewage system. They had,
you know, as he said, they had the QTT names
for different streets. But it started to go downhill almost
(21:40):
immediately because there wasn't new investment coming in. And this
gave it that dystopian fallout esque vibe that we were
foreshadowing earlier. And to be clear, people were still living there,
just not as many as Penn had originally hoped. And
so if we fast forward to the night teen seventies,
(22:01):
we get to the real ecological disaster. The bill starts
to come do and tourists don't love unpleasant things.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
No, And we talked about how the salt levels kind
of were on the rise and all of this shoreline
flooding was also on the rise. You had farm farming
communities nearby, you know, I mean if you go outside
of LA you know, places like Modesto and you know
a little bit further out from Los Angeles proper, it
is super rural and a lot of farming going on
(22:33):
out there. You know, things like oranges and various crops,
you know, avocado, whatever. But they have to be fertilized,
and there were times where regulations surrounding you know, what
kind of fertilizer could be used and how it had
to be dealt with were not nearly as strict as
they are today. So you had a lot of runoff
from these nearby farms causing increasing imbalances in the kind
(22:58):
of chemical makeup of the waters of the salt and sea.
Pair that with that rising salinity and you start to
get these massive fish kills with like fish bones, skeletons
kind of piling up on the shore. A lot of
those fish that had been stocked, you know, the various species,
I believe, including let's see, we had croaker corvina, Yeah,
(23:23):
something like I think sargo. I'm not a fish scientist,
but those were several of the species. They just began
to die off, and it was only I think a
few of the more resilient species that even stuck around
at all.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Right, and this included some endangered species like the desert pupfish.
Coupled with this, there are a number of biblical level storms.
If you had a resort barely holding on, guess what,
there's an act of God coming your way. It's not
in your favor, So a lot of people were forced
(23:55):
to pull out because the numbers just weren't working as
an investment. If you fast forward now, you'll see, as
you said, just a few very resilient fish species surviving
for now. And yeah, and just like just like the
Marinas a few years back, these things are barely holding on.
(24:20):
This gets even worse in two thousand and three. There's
something called the Quantification Settlement Agreement. Shout out to the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife if you'd like to
learn more. Its street name is the QSA. Basically, it's
a covenant between states that share the Hoover Dam and
the Colorado River. And we know California has historically been
(24:45):
the least favorite state in this agreement because they tend
to use more water than the originally agreed amount or limit.
And we also have to say, in California's defense, it
is a country all its own, Like if you look
at the GDP of California, it's a huge country. You know,
(25:08):
it's quite unique in that regard. And for a long
period of time, everybody just sort of made do and
they said, Okay, we'll figure it out next year, we'll
keep kicking the can down the length of this dam
because Nevada and Nevada and Arizona never used their full
quota of water, so people were just sliding the leftover
(25:33):
to California. But problem is, not every place out west
is like the Saltan city idea. There are thriving, huge populations,
huge cities that in some cases you could argue should
not exist. Sorry, Las Vegas, but shout out to you.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Just slap there in the middle of the California desert,
you know, by the mafia. The founding of Las Vegas
is fascinating, as we discovered when we were out there
not too long ago. But all of this to say
that this QSA imposes some pretty serious water conservation measures
that ultimately have the unintended consequence of drying up the
(26:11):
salt and sea. And in doing that, again, I'm not
a water expert here, but it caused the salinity to
rise even further as the sea was drying up. And
I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe Matter or
Max you have an idea.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Yeah, So what I got through this research, and I
mean shout out to the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife because the right up on. This is very long.
If we did the right up alone, it would be
like an entire episode. But basically the gist of it is,
there's a ton of there's a ton of salt in
the salt sea, but the water getting dumped into the
(26:50):
salt and sea is fresh water, so dilute it down.
But so as California was getting less and less water
because you know, Nevada and Arizona needed more less water
going to the crops to run off, and those parts
about becoming more efficient, unintended consequences. Basically, there's less fresh
(27:10):
water getting dumped into this very high salt count and
the water can't go anywhere, so what happens to it?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So it evaporates or it goes into the ground, which
causes the salinity to naturally increase. And the problem is
that the wildlife in this area is not the kind
of wildlife that has evolved to exist in these changing circumstances.
The Sultancy in its current iteration for Everybody Playing Along
(27:39):
at Home has only existed for around a century, which
is very short term in the life span of bodies
of water, and in just that amount of time, since
it was the only show in town, ecologically, it became
a huge resource for things like migratory birds, for resident
animal populations like our pal the pupfish, some endangered species.
(28:04):
So because the because the rest of California was getting
developed at such a hectic pace, they were losing wetlands
and the Sultan Sea became the replacement. It became the
we have wetlands at home. It's like the wish version
of a wetland on et sea. So these these birds
(28:27):
in the North American continent need a pit stop, especially
if they're migratory, and the Sultan Sea becomes that. We
just don't think it will last very long. It's an
unsustainable situation because the marine animals are not going to
be able to survive that increasing salinity. There's a reason
(28:49):
another very briny sea is called the Dead Sea. Super
great for boats, not super great floating, yeah, not super
great for freshwater fish though, and this leads us to
the next turn in the story. The demise of the
(29:09):
Sultan Sea had consequences beyond the water itself. As the
sea declined, we see things. We see things become increasingly dystopian.
The human population that used to be kind of like
(29:30):
novou Riche aspirational, middle class, upper middle class tourists. They leave,
and the folks who remain there just like the Just
like the salt that remains in the Sultan Sea, it
gets weirder and weirder with each passing year. The vibe
becomes strange.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Right, more and more dystopian. I'm a Newburger, writing for CNBC,
had this to say. The vision for Saltan City was clear,
a bustling resort community along the crystal blue waters the
Sultan Sea. The city's reality is more grim. Instead of
a vacation spot, it feels like a post apocalyptic ghost town.
Most of the homes were demolished or never built. The
(30:09):
palm trees are stumps, and the sea, while beautiful, is toxic.
And you know, she actually interviewed Frank Ruez from the
Audubon Society. The Audubon Society has a Sultan Sea program,
and he said people here used to fish, swim, bring
their boats. They went from living in paradise to living
(30:32):
in hell.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, and that is not hyperbole. This also this also
affects the surrounding land. Imperial County remains one of the
poorest counties in the state of California, and there's a
problem with the smell. That's right, fans are always sunny.
We're doing that Dennis Reynolds joke because it works. We're
(30:54):
not going to give you the full quote because we're
a family show. But the smell became a huge issue,
and it's also a teachable moment for our friends in
Utah who are worried about the stench of the Great
Salt Lake. It's because of the chemical changes. You know,
the dust is blowing over the dry lake beds as
(31:16):
the salt and sea slowly evaporates, and that means you're
getting hydrogen sulfide. You're also getting dangerous stuff like arsenic
and selenium. And people who live there, honestly, people who
are affected by it. Many families cannot afford to move,
so they just have to put up with this horrible
smell and possible health effects in the long term.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Right and Ruiz Frank Ruis from the Audubon said, it
makes the point that we see happen all the time
with things like this. If the sea were next to
Los Angeles, it would have been fixed long ago. But
it's next to poor communities and they don't have the
political leverage. There are a lot of Latino families that
live in this area, and it is just they just
(31:59):
don't have the clout and representation to do something about it.
Politicians in Los Angeles are concerned more with things directly
affecting the residents of Los Angeles, and these folks seem
to be up Poop Creek without a paddle.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah, they're in the salt without the shaker for sure.
And let's go to Robert Schettler, who is a spokesperson
for the Imperial Irrigation District or IID. Schetler says, look,
let's stay optimistic. Not all is lost. It is a
huge problem. It does need attention yesterday, but we are
(32:41):
happy to see that there are more. There are indications
of positive efforts like small, small scale air quality mitigation plans,
trying to reinstitute some vegetation that would help also prevent erosion,
help some of that water go to a better use.
(33:01):
And this all goes to the big question that people
have been asking for decades and decades now and perhaps
years in the past when earlier iterations of the sea evaporated.
Is there a way to save the salt and sea?
Back to our friend from all this interesting Kiri says, Look,
(33:22):
people are trying. There's a there's a ten year plan
that came out pretty recently in twenty eighteen where California's
Natural Resource Agency. That's right, folks, there are a lot
of like alphabet government agencies working on this. Our pals
at the Natural Resource Agency said, look, over the next decade,
we're going to make thirty thousand acres of habitat. We're
(33:45):
going to suppress this dust that makes everything look so
mad max on the lake shore, and then we're going
to import new water. Nol importing new water. That's that's
a that's a dicey one.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Well, Ben, didn't this come up in a story that
we've covered a couple of times on stuff they don't
want you to know. That's right, And they were for
a time, I believe, doing just that, like importing. Maybe
it wasn't that they were importing water to dilute the salinity,
but it was the kind of thing that would maybe
work as a quick stopgap measure, but like over a
(34:21):
long period of time, just isn't tenable.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Right, The quest for a better band aid, just like
the Hoover Dam. At the end of twenty twenty, only
seven hundred and fifty five acres of dust suppression projects
had started. They originally wanted there to be something like
one thousand, seven hundred and fifty and no habitat projects
have been started either. So again, you know, shout out
(34:46):
Sam Cook, shout out Ben Sale, A change is gonna come.
The question is will the change come in time. Everybody
knows California is way behind schedule in any restoration efforts
the Sultan Sea. But there are a lot of very good,
very smart people working on this. They just have to
(35:07):
work through red tape. They have to work through all
these stakeholders, all these bureaucracies, and it's increasingly difficult to
ask for more water in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
It's right, and it's not just water resource management agencies
that are getting involved. There are also folks from the
state's Energy Commission providing funding to various energy companies to
look into lithium alternatives in order to grow geothermal development
and lithium recovery in order to maybe provide clean energy
(35:41):
and create some.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Local jobs there.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, exactly, and we have talked about this on our
peer shows. Stuff they don't want you to know right now.
Companies are dumping billions into what they're calling Lithium Valley.
There is a quite ambitious vision, similar to that of
Penn Phillips all those decades ago, to build a new
(36:06):
tech forward community out in this area and maybe at
some point the fix the smell. A lot of this
is coming from a San Diego based company called Energy
Source Minerals.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
And to your point, Ben, it's sort of like the
focus is maybe shifted on things that could potentially be
job creating and money making, so the ecological issue is
maybe taken a little bit of a back seat, but
it's not completely out of mind.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Ruiz, who he talked about earlier, who.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Is the director of the Audubon Society's Sultan Sea Initiative,
had this to say about it. We have a moral
obligation to look after the wildlife and communities affected by
the Sultan Sea. I'd love to see the lake full
of water, but it's not feasible. The solution is for communities,
water districts, and environ mental groups to find common ground
(37:01):
and protect it. And oftentimes this is me that common
ground comes in the forms of things that can make
money for people, and that can be seen as like
the rising tide that perhaps raises the water level of
the Sultan Sea. That cannot be in a society that
is very much reliant on commerce the number one priority.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It has to be just sort of a byproduct of
all the other stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Unfortunately, that's where we get to the idea of conflicting
interest of so called stakeholders. There's also another question. Maybe
this is where we where we end it now. It's
a question for everybody tuning in, everybody who lives at
the Sultan Sea or is doing the work to try
to save this quite eccentric body of water. What if
(37:51):
we got the origin story wrong? What if the Sultan
Sea should just be allowed to come and go. There
are folks like Loggie who argue that, hey, maybe the
sea just happens over thousands of years, probably before humans.
To be honest, this sea has come and gone. Perhaps
(38:13):
it's its formation and its current iteration was inevitable, and
that famous canal breach back in nineteen oh five just
sort of move the timeline right. And if that is
the case, then should people spend all this time and
effort to save a sea that just sort of is
an indoor outdoor cat Ecologically it comes and goes, it
(38:37):
comes and goes, Oh.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
My goodness, I don't think. No, no, it's a good question.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
And you know, and is you know, sometimes there are
byproducts of naturally occurring processes, you know, on the planet
that maybe shouldn't be messed with, and that once they're
messed with, then that can trigger a new timeline of
kind of a dominant effect of negative consequences. So it
(39:03):
could be that because of the intervention of human beings
in the first place, is what triggered a lot of
this really nasty fallout. So that does beg the question,
like to what this person you quoted ben as saying,
maybe that would be true if it hadn't have been
messed with in the first place, But now that it
has been messed with, it's become a problem that does
(39:25):
need some level of addressing, or it's just gonna get worse,
or that part of the country they're just gonna have
to like pull those over the whole thing and start
from scratch, you know, fill it in with concrete or something.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I don't know what would happen. What are the alternatives?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
I mean, it's anybody's game, you know. And look, it
sounds like we're possibly taking a hit out on the
good people in the assaulted area. We are absolutely not
got to tell you, folks, we are not a crew
of folks who have spent a lot of time in
the desert. So I think it's fair to say when
(40:00):
folks like us venture out west, especially to this part
of California, all that open space kind of puts the
zap on us. It's like when Max met Montana and
saw why they call it sky Country.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
It's big.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
This scale is amazing.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
I remember I remember.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Driving you and the gang out just the Hoover Dam
and we were all somewhat speechless by the immensity.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Of the of the area.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah, I think super producer Paul Mission Controlled dechead of
Stuff that I want you to know, said, it almost
felt not real, like you were looking at something that
was created in a video game or something, because of
the vastness of it and just the epic, you know,
expanse of it all that we're not used to seeing that.
You know, U must you live out there. We're not
(40:46):
used to seeing that in real life. We're its kind
of used to seeing recreations of it, So it almost
feels like you're in sort of an immersive virtual reality
kind of situation, which is pretty weird to say, but
it's it's true. I was hit the same way by
it that it had this uncanny valley kind of vibe
to it.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And there's a beauty to it, you know, And there's
a beauty, there's the ambiguity. There are many questions left
to answer about the Sultan Sea. One thing is for sure.
The clock is ticking. Perhaps the origin story is ridiculous,
but it has also inspired a great deal of human ingenuity,
(41:24):
and we can't wait to see what sort of solutions
are on the way in the future. We also can't
thank you enough for tuning in, and thank you to
our super producer and research associate for today's episode, mister
Max Williams. Guys, I forget to tell you I sent
over the holiday, by which I mean.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Today before we record it.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I dropped our old pal Jonathan Strickland a quick line,
asked him if you wanted to be on the show,
wished him a happy New Year and maybe he will
deign to return. I have figured out how to tell
him he's got some competition now with the Puzzler.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Oh, the Puzzler.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
I really do think we should like pit them against
one another in a quiz slash puzzle off.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, it'll be for the ages.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
But you know, we can't thank you enough for tuning in,
but we surely will try. And we also like to
thank everyone else that makes the show possible, of course,
including Max Williams, super producer slash research associate Alex Williams
who composed this theme, Chris frostiotis here in spirit, and
Eves Jeff Coates wandering the wide world of podcasts.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
I'd like to thank Tom Waits sultan Ce feels like
his vibe. Oh yeah, he was going to go on
the show with us, but he only accepts payment in
rusted nineteen fifty seven Chevy parts. It's true, which we
didn't have handy. But Tom, if you're hearing, we hope
you enjoyed this one as well.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
I think Tom listens to the show. He only listens
to stuff on like an old Victrola.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Right right, and he has to have a busted, busted
couple tubes that he can scatter around. Just so, please
tune in later this week we are going to explore
a complex, strange phenomenon of yesteryear. You may have asked yourselves, folks, Hey,
(43:18):
why do so many pictures of historical figures in childhood?
Why do they seem to be wearing dot dot dot dresses.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
And our short pants? What is the little Lord fault Leroy?
Look the Buster Brown. We'll get to it on the
next episode of Ridiculous History. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(43:49):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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