Accidental Birth Of Salton Sea

In the early 1900s, an industrial engineering screw-up on irrigation works for the Imperial Canal caused the entire Colorado River to spill into a low-lying California valley for nearly two years. With the river flooding unchecked through a failed headgate and diversion cuts, water filled the Salton Sink and created a 318-square-mile body of water now known as the Salton Sea. The accidental inland sea remains one of the largest lakes in California, born entirely from that prolonged engineering failure.

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