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At the turn of the twentieth century, entrepreneurial developers diverted a portion of the Colorado River to a desert basin in southeastern California, creating fertile land that attracted thousands of settlers. But the irrigation system fostered unprecedented flooding in 1905, when a rain-swollen Colorado coursed through the manmade canals, creating the Salton Sea, California's largest lake. By mid-century, the Salton Sea had become a recreational oasis. During the 1980s, however, it was largely abandoned, after years of unpredictable flooding and contamination from agricultural runoff had rendered its waters and shoreline highly toxic.

Since 1995, Kim Stringfellow has documented these troubled waters in striking color photographs, scavenged the area for artifacts, and studied its ecological and cultural histories. She has compiled this research into an interactive website and book, which chronicle the fluctuating fortunes of the Salton Sea. Though her work is partly an indictment of human folly and environmental mismanagement, Stringfellow’s multimedia study of the Salton Sea is not simply an exercise in finger-pointing. Despite its artificial origins, the sea has become a sanctuary for endangered fish species and migratory birds. Stringfellow presents the history of the Salton Sea as a cautionary tale, while anticipating its future as a potential model of environmental reclamation and sustainable living.

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