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The Slabs and The Sea

Photo-Essay

Slab City, in the middle of the California desert, is home to about 100 permanent residents, who may still be considered squatters. It is a vast and empty area where it is ‘free’ to park, camp, and stay as long as you like. The area is occupied primarily by aging hippies and rebels who like the notion of living off the grid, and freedom from ‘government oppression.’ Alcoholism and sloth is rampant among these sweet, lonely people. The closest city is Niland, CA, which offers a selection of three restaurants, a grocery store, and a gas station.

 

North of this area is the Salton Sea—an immense man-made mistake. During floods at the turn of the century, efforts to divert the Colorado River flooded the basin that is now the Sea. By the fifties, it was a Hollywood elite getaway of waterskiing, polo, and the resort lifestyle, complete with a yacht club. Sadly, as a result of introducing fish wildlife into this lake fed only by storm and farm runoff, the natural order of things was greatly disturbed. The lake flooded too many times, the fish multiplied outrageously, and now fill the beaches with their dried bones. All the cities in the vicinity have become homes to under 1000 citizens each… who cling to a past that is no longer. It is a wasteland world of rural abandonment, and folks who cling to hope for an unlikely future.