I don’t remember what got me to it, but the other day I found this short documetary video about Southern California’s Salton Sea, a saline lake about 80 miles inland from San Diego:

I knew about its infamy as a failed resort destination, with planned developments like Desert Shores and Salton City that popped up on its edge in the 1950s. What I didn’t know was the sea’s history as the result of an engineering accident, induced by the California Development Company trying to divert...