View of Salton Sea from Bombay Beach.  The Salton Sea is a man made lake in a natural topographical depression in the Imperial Valley. It was made by accident in the early 1900's when flooding caused the American Canal to break it's levee and water via the canal from the Colorado River filled in this basin. It was stocked with fish with the hopes of it becoming a resort destination for LA, but surface runoff from agriculture in the area going into a lake with no outlet made the lake saline and rich in nitrates killing most of the fish. Now the sand you see on this "beach" is mostly salt crystals and fishbones.