Our final stop in the area was the remains of the Bombay Beach Resort on the Salton Sea, which is actually a lake that was created in 1905 when the Colorado River flooded the area. Developers branded it the ‘Salton Riviera’ and created a resort that thrived during the 50s and 60s where guests swam, water-skied, and golfed. Sadly, this desert region gets almost no rainfall and with no drainage outlet, the water was polluted by pesticides and runoff from nearby farms. The pollution killed scores of fish which decomposed on the beach. The odor of decaying fish and fears of health problems caused the resort to be mostly abandoned. Although the population has risen recently, it’s still considered a “living ghost town.”

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Bombay Beach is not lost on ‘Hollywood’, it attracts many photographers, filmmakers, and tourists, to the point that locals tend to ask visitors if they are filmmakers that are there to shoot a documentary. There were two different film crews shooting in the area the afternoon we were there.

We thought the Bombay Beach Drive-In was creepy enough looking on its own. Apparently so did a film crew who was shooting a pre-production trailer for a possible horror movie!

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The second production crew was on the other end of town shooting a music video. We still don’t know who the singer is but it looked like a fairly high level production so who knows, maybe someday we’ll see it on MTV and go AHA! THAT’S WHO THAT WAS! (If only we watched MTV 🙂 )

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