Blueprint of a Disaster: How a Simple Engineering Mistake Birthed California's Deadliest Accidental Sea

At the dawn of the 20th century, developers saw an arid basin in Southern California and dreamed of an agricultural paradise. Instead, a single miscalculation turned the mighty Colorado River inland, flooding the desert for two relentless years.

This catastrophic engineering failure birthed the Salton Sea, a massive accidental ocean that transformed into a glamorous mid-century resort destination, only to become one of the nation's worst ecological time bombs. Beneath its receding, toxic wat...