The Bombay Beach, California

bombay_beach_california_madras_courier
Representational Image: Wikipedia. Abandoned, salt-encrusted structures on the Salton Sea shore at Bombay Beach in 2004.
There is a Bombay Beach in California. But it is abandoned, sort of!

Mumbai has quite a few beaches. The Juhu beach and Gorai beach are the popular ones. In places like Vasai-Virar, one can easily find beaches. There is a Bombay Beach in California, too. However, there are two things different about Bombay beach that make it different from the beaches in Mumbai. One is the location, and the other is the abandoned beach.

Well, not entirely abandoned. But, first, the history of the beach. Bombay Beach came about in the early 1900s. The beach is the largest in California by volume. Usually, beaches have existed since the beginning of time on the planet. This beach, however, exists by fate. A lake named Lake Cahuilla was created in 700 A.D. Native Americans used the lake for fishing, planting, and hunting birds. They utilised the water as long as it was there. Then, it wasn’t.

The lake slowly began to dry, and by the time the Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, it had dried up. Over time, there were multiple instances where the lake filled and then dried out again. The largest infilling happened in the early 1700s until it dried up.

In the 1800s, the lake basin kept filling up and drying out because of the Colorado river nearby. In 1900, a man named Charles H. Rockwood decided to create an oasis in the desert using a lake – a series of canals allowed for irrigation. However, in 1905, the river waters were overflowing with heavy rainfall. It caused the dike of the canal to break and led to serious flooding in the lake basin.



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