salton sea yacht club

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North Shore Beach and Yacht Club

Salton sea, calif..

Designed by Swiss-born Modernist architect Albert Frey,* the Yacht Club is an architectural gem sitting in a pretty desolate location, the northeastern shore of the Salton Sea, across Highway 111 and the Southern Pacific tracks from the unincorporated community of North Shore. Built in 1959, the marina was used to dock boats, in an era when the Sea had more visitors per year than Yosemite.

With the jetty long gone and the Yacht Club abandoned and vandalized, in 2009, Riverside County restored the building. For about a year the Salton Sea Museum operated from the building, with over 7000 visitors signing in. Sadly the museum closed, and the facility is now primarily used as a community center by Desert Recreational District. BUT at least it is being used and maintained!

Now the “new” problem is the dropping Sea water level, leaving the inlet to the marina cut off from the Sea. Last month the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy** voted to approve a grant, which along with funds from the Bureau of Reclamation and the California Natural Resources Agency, would enable the Salton Sea Authority to rehabilitate the inlet and marina. If you go to Google Maps satellite image of the area, you can see a tiny, compromised inlet from the Sea to the marina. However, last Sunday I went down to take photos and stood “in the inlet,” on dry beach to take the photo below.

Last Spring Desert X https://www.desertx.org/ brought more visitors to the area to see the outdoor art installations around the Coachella Valley, including the Salton Sea. It reminds me a little of Marfa Texas, in that a gem of art, is sitting in an out of the way location.

Next week the Salton Sea Summit will convene at UCR Palm Desert campus; let us hope this will bring needed attention and solutions.

*Albert Frey’s architecture is Desert Modernism, centered on Palm Springs; his work includes the Palm Springs Tramway Valley Station and the Tramway Gas Station, now used an a Visitor’s Center on the entry into the City, as well as City Hall, etc.

** I am the State Senate appointee and current Chairwoman http://cvmc.ca.gov/

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I grew up in the Coachella Valley; my parents were "heavy earthwork" contractors, mostly building government projects, so I spent a lot of time on the back roads of the West. I'm a graduate of Vassar College (history major) and the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William & Mary. Retired from the Law, I now grow dates, sweet limes & figs on the family ranch, and am the State Senate appointee to the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy. View all posts by History Trover

9 thoughts on “ North Shore Beach and Yacht Club ”

In the late 1960s, when the weather was nice, my grandfather would drive to Salton Sea with my grandmother and I.

Grandma would “bird”, Grandpa would take pictures and I would play in the mud.

We would then have a picnic lunch and a few hours later, head home.

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What wonderful memories!

A few random thoughts: 1. Who provided this site with the postcard alleging it as an authentic 1959 card? 2. Even as late as ’59, photoshop, cut & paste technology could not have produced the wildly imaginative backdrop as shown in the photo this site shows. 3. Although the Tilapia, Croaker and Corvina are long gone, there’s some thing rather ‘fishy’ about the card as it is represented.

The postcard was handed out at the reopening of the Yacht Club building in 2010. The Salton Sea Museum distributed it as a reprint with no copyright notice (see caption above). The lady who was the “guiding light” behind the Museum/Historical Society passed away a few years ago, and I have no idea how one could find out her source.

Since the water level in the Sea has dropped so much, I have no way of getting on a boat and seeing what the background, seen from that height, would show today; however, I agree that showing that much of the sand hills in the background is improbable. It wouldn’t be the first advertising postcard that exaggerated a scene.

The purpose of my post was two fold: to show the tremendous drop in the Sea level, making the entrance to the yacht club basin inaccessible; and to show the building before the vandalism (I do think the colors in the card are rather lurid, but that may be due to color film aging).

I am from the southern end of the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley. The IID (Imperial Irrigation District) has been fighting to save the sea, but it faces so many obstacles. There are several Western states, local governments, bureaucratic agencies, water districts, and Mexico that have a legal claim on water from the Colorado River.

The Boulder Canyon Project (1928) established water rights for water districts throughout Southern California, but the IID claims it was granted superior rights by the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Most of the water (97%) apportioned by the IID is transferred to Imperial Valley farmers.

Under the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) of 2003, the IID agreed to a 50-year transfer of water to San Diego County with the understanding that the State of California would commit to saving the Salton Sea.

Why is this important?

The sea depends on agricultural runoff to maintain its water level. The runoff is channeled through the New River basin. One of the effects of the QSA is that the IID has paid farmers to not grow crops. In order to sell Valley residents on the transfer of water to San Diego, the IID said that it would not result in water restrictions.

That was a lie which I predicted 17 years ago. When you drive through the Valley today, you’ll be struck by all the dead trees, lawns and landscaping. In the ensuing years there have been shortages of winter produce because farmers are being paid not to farm.

Now the IID is telling farmers it is going to reduce, or eliminate the subsidy to fallow their land. The ag community is up in arms.

One other issue that is being ignored is that the New River (which flows across the border from Mexico) is North America’s most heavily polluted body of water. It contains every known contaminant, toxin, pathogen, virus and bacterium … and it discahrges into the Salton Sea!

And what is the State of California doing, or the Federal government for that matter? Nothing, if you ask the residents of Imperial County. Mexico, seemingly, is permitted to violate the International Boundary and Water Commission.

Our state senator said that we cannot expect that the Salton Sea will ever be restored to its glory days when it was known as Palm Springs South; and there is an opinion in Congress that the Salton Sea was a freak accident, and not worth being saved.

Solutions have been offered like creating evaporation ponds where the water is essentially desalinated. The agricultural runoff that feeds the sea is also the source of the concentrated salt that is leeched from the soil. Those concentrations are responsible for killing millions of fish and birds.

It’s a two-edged sword. The sea needs the water, but not the salt. A transfusion of water either from the Colorado River, or Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. might be the solution. The IID, as a result of QSA, doesn’t have the water to spare so the Colorado is a non-starter.

I have suggested that Mexico permit the United States to transfer water from the Sea of Cortez in exchange for the cleanup of the New River. Mexico cannot afford to treat the water flowing across the border so my proposal would be that the U.S. pay for a treatment facility in exchange for the transfer of water.

Alternately, Utah’s Great Salt Lake and California’s Mono Lake.might be viable solutions.

State and Federal officials have agreed that the Salton Sea is in “dire straits”. It is an environmental catastrophe. Migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway depend on this most essential rest stop. In addition, the dry lake bed has contributed to a massive dust cloud that envelopes the county. Many kids, myself included, are literally born with asthma. In California, the largest number of emergency room visits by asthmatic children is in the Imperial Valley.

The air is not fit to breathe. Homeowners’ lawns have turned to dust so it’s not even healthy to play in the front yard.

The transfusion of water could cost $50 billion. Do we have the will (and the money) to save the sea? At least for the sake of the children’s health, and the conservation of wildlife.

Thank you for a great summary. The 1922 Compact allocation was based on the data then available, but those readings were from the wettest years for centuries. The situation on the River is exacerbated by many factors, but the main factors are; the other 6 states have developed in the last 98 years and now are demanding their share of the allocations; years of drought have taken their toll; and, as David points out, the transfer to San Diego was confirmed based on promises that California would adopt a Salton Sea plan and take action.

My dad (who built major water projects for the Bureau of Reclamation, etc.) told me many years ago that water would end up being transferred from agricultural areas to cities because cities have more votes in DC.

The economic and health consequences are major issues; the Imperial Valley & lower Coachella Valley have many residents who are economically disadvantaged. Add to that, even the County Clubs residents of the upper CV should be concerned that their property values can plummet, due to the smells, dust, and water challenges to the golf courses and landscaping.

Keeping this issue before the public seems to be the only way to convince Washington & Sacramento to take action.

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Some readers may not be aware that saving the Salton Sea was a passion of Rep. Sonny Bono. The southern end of the sea in the Imperial Valley was designated the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge in 1998. This is not a new issue, but still unresolved after so many years. The biggest hurdle is that there are so many competing interests. Drought conditions only magnify the problem as maintaining the water level at Lake Mead has become the priority. Western distribution of water from the Colorado River depends on a healthy Lake Mead.

California’s 2020 budget includes funding for AB 617 (Community Air Protection Program) sponsored by the Imperial Valley and Eastern Coachella Valley. The New River Improvement Project and the North Lake Project, part of the Salton Sea Management Plan, will receive $47 million for habitat and air quality improvement. These are basically remediation projects — not restoration.

We can hope that these project actually receive funding. There really is no plan for restoration, only mitigation.

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Albert Frey: North Shore Beach and Yacht Club (Salton Sea, Calif.)

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NEVER QUITE LOST

The road goes on forever.

NOT QUITE SUCH A SHORE THING

Half close your eyes, ignore the smell of rotting fish and you could see why this was such a popular place in the 1960s. The pilings to the left are the remains of the boat jetty.

The North Shore Beach and Yacht Club began construction in 1958 at a time when that accidental sea, the Salton Sea, was an up-and-coming destination and not the dead fish-ridden wasteland that much of it has become today.

Back when it looked like the resort would last forever.

Back in the 1950s, there was a multi-million dollar plan for what would become California’s largest marina and the jewel in the crown was the yacht club, designed by architect Albert Frey who was responsible for ‘desert modernism’ and whose influence on Palm Springs remains to this day. Frey delighted in the idea of creating a ship in the middle of a desert by a sea that shouldn’t exist, and his design is evocative of a boat with a curved prow, mast, crow’s nest lounge and porthole windows. It soon became popular, promoted as ‘The Glamour Capital of the Salton Sea’, and Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, the Beach Boys and the Marx Brothers all visited the club.

Bereft of its nautical flags and Albert Frey’s signature yellow fibre glass panels.

One of the developers who built the yacht club was Ray Ryan, who had been responsible for the restoration of the El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs and later opened the Bermuda Dunes Country Club. Ryan was a flamboyant character who, it was whispered, had connections to the Mob. Stepping out of the Olympia health club in Evansville, Indiana on 18 th October 1977, he got into his new Lincoln Continental Mark V coupe and turned the key. The car exploded. Ryan was killed immediately, the power was knocked out over the south part of Evansville and it took two days to find all the pieces of the Lincoln.

From a LA Time supplement of April 1963. The yacht club is in the middle left, with the pool clearly visible. The jetty was destroyed in 1981, and the motel at the top of the picture in late 2008.

Without Ryan, it’s unlikely that North Shore would have been the destination spot that it became in the 1960s, but even he could do little about the twin forces of a recession and environmental problems, both of which ensured the resort’s downfall. As the development boom went bust in the 1970s, countless lots were simply abandoned, while water pollution saw the number of visitors fall. Flooding compounded the area’s problems and, in 1981, a flood destroyed the North Shore Marina’s jetty. If people couldn’t dock their boats, they wouldn’t visit. Many took their boats away from the Salton Sea entirely as they found the increased salinity clogging expensive marine engines.

By 1984, the yacht club was forced to shut its doors. Eventually it fell prey to vandals who exacerbated the interior damage caused by its use as a film location in 2005 (the front was also painted with the name ‘Aces & Spades’ for the movie The Island and the inside gutted) and to skateboarders who treasured the yacht club’s now-empty swooping pool.

The North Shore Motel close to the yacht club. The motel was torn down a few months after this photo was taken.

But that’s not quite the end of the story. The North Shore Yacht Club looked like this when I first visited in 2008. There was a large motel nearby, albeit also boarded up. When I returned three years later, the motel had been razed to the ground but, to my surprise, the yacht club had been restored to its former glory. It was, apparently, intended for use as a community centre and home to the Salton Sea History Museum. But here’s the rub; the owners of the property terminated the museum’s lease after a handful of years, forcing the museum into (hopefully temporary) closure, while every time I’ve been there, the place has been firmly shut up with no indication of any future community events to be held there.

If a club designed to look like a ship in the desert was incongruous, the site of a restored and repainted disused building at North Shore is even odder still.

The North Shore Beach & Yacht Club in 2008.

The North Shore Beach & Yacht Club in 2014.

The famous pool, now gone.

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4 thoughts on “ not quite such a shore thing ”.

Extraordinary once more. Delivering to us the odd and magical of the Americas. Peoples visions and natures destruction. People fighting back to be left forlorn once more.

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What a fascinating and sad end to such a once “dreamy” place. Great story. I really enjoy this blog.

Thank you so much for the kind comment – especially when you have so much more to worry about right now. Stay safe, stay dry x

Shortly after it was formed in 1905 the Salton Sea quickly became a popular recreation area for boating, fishing and water skiing. That worked fine until the late 1950s, when some moron decided to build motels, restaurants, trailer parks, etc. and that’s when the whole thing collapsed. The greedy developers who wasted their millions trying to make the Salton something it could never be, didn’t consider that the New River from Mexico flows north, constantly raising the water level, while bringing all the Mexican sewage with it.

Lawsuits flew for the next few decades, with the Imperial Irrigation District absorbing the majority of all the civil judgments.

I moved from Palm Springs in 2003, after having photographed the “Aces and Spades” notation several years earlier, so it could not have been added in 2005. I didn’t know what it was, but figured it was from a movie. Meanwhile, in the last fifteen years, somebody had decided to restore and reopen the Yacht Club as a ritzy bar and restaurant, and the current improvements you see now are as far as they’ve progressed. Sonny Bono was formulating plans to restore the ecological part of the Salton Sea, but that effort was abandoned after he was killed suddenly in a skiing accident.

The foul smells of dead fish and plankton are only seasonal, usually in late spring, but the desert winds carry them all the way into Palm Springs.

Hope this helps. I love your site, too!

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Going for Shipshape

Riverside county plans to restore the long-abandoned north shore yacht club.

by Ann Japenga | Jul 30, 2009 | Uncategorized

The revamped club will serve as a senior center, community center, and museum — the latter under the direction of North Shore preservationist Jennie Kelly, who has already helped bring the long-extinct boat races back to the sea. The new museum is where the tale of Albert Frey’s shimmering yacht club — with its fantastic ups and downs — will finally be told.

TRENDING NOW

North Shore Beach and Yacht Club

Introduction.

Text-to-speech Audio

Backstory and Context

Approximately 600 tons of added salt continue to be deposited in the sea annually through irrigation water from the Colorado River. Some of the first resorts on the Salton Sea emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. These resorts catered to travelers who wanted to witness the mysterious sea in the middle of the desert. Recreation--boating, swimming, fishing--remained an important part of the Salton Sea through the 1950s when the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club was built.

Additional Information

• The Salton Sea Museum and Visitor Center Website provides historical information and photos on the Salton Sea. It also advocates for modern-day preservation and conservation of the desert sea.

• ORDER THE BOOK
• The Creation Flood
• Mullet Island
• Salton Sea Test Base
• Salton City
• North Shore Yacht Club
• Hypersalinity
• Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge
• Microsalton
• The New River
• Bombay Beach
• Salton Sea Beach
• Salvation Mountain
• Salton Buttes
• Water Transfer
• Air Quality
• SALTON SEA 101

North Shore Beach & Yacht Club

The North Shore Beach and Yacht Club was built in 1960 by developers Ray Ryan and Trav Rogers for $2 million. Designed in a nautical theme by renowned mid-century architect, Albert Frey, the complex boasted one of the largest marinas in Southern California.  An adjacent motel was built with additional plans for the North Shore Beach Estates, a planned housing development that never materialized. The Beach Boys, Jerry Lewis, and Marx Brothers all visited the club or kept boats at the marina. The complex marketed as the “The Glamour Capital of the Salton Sea” hosted boat races, parties, and other popular events. Ryan, an oil millionaire with reputed mob connections and a taste for gambling was killed in a mysterious car bombing in 1977.

During the early 1980s, flooding from excessive agricultural wastewater discharges from Imperial Valley farms in conjunction with higher-than-normal seasonal storm runoff began to inundate the marina and surrounding property.  One such flood in 1981 destroyed the marina’s jetty making it impossible to dock boats. Eventually the facility was closed by 1984 leaving it to vandals and skate boarders that frequented the club’s pool.

In July 2009, Riverside County supervisors approved the use of a $3.35 million grant to rehabilitate and redevelop the property. Restoration of Frey’s yacht club building was completed in 2010 and reopened as a community center and museum for the Salton Sea. The museum’s tenure at this prime location was short-lived however; Riverside County officials decided not to renew the operational arrangement with the museum staff and it was moved to a new location in Mecca, which has since closed. The museum staff is currently looking for another location. For more information, visit: http://saltonseamuseum.org/ .

POI: North Shore Beach & Yacht Club

Be sure to visit the beautifully restored yacht club building off Highway 111 at North Shore.

View of the planned North Shore Estates, North Shore, CA. Click for larger image.

HAERR TRIPPIN'

Salton sea: north shore beach & yacht club....

2 comments:

I really enjoyed your recent posts, particularly the phrase "vitamin N," which captures the restorative power of nature. John and I went for a drive in the oak parkland of the Sierra foothills yesterday. We only got out of the car to buy gas, where we found our newly acquired single use gloves much easier to use handling the gas pump and buttons than the paper towels we had used before. Thanks for sharing. Kay Henderson

The Salton Sea isn't a place that I have really explored. I mean, it doesn't look like much as you are passing through, and who even passes through this area anyway!? That being said, I think we go to Anza Borrego again we will at least stop... ;)

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Recent Comments

Salton Sea: Then and now

Pictures captured from the same vantage point years apart illustrate stark changes to the landscape as california’s largest body of water has shrunk..

When I started this project, I intended to have many “before and after” photographs. I wanted to recreate photos from the same vantage point — but years apart — to show the sea’s water level declines. 

But I found the landscape around the sea has changed so dramatically, I was unable to find some of the spots that I had photographed years ago. Certain places and shorelines were unrecognizable or overgrown as the sea had receded.

I thought any changes would be subtle. Yet seeing the old and new together, I’m surprised by just how dramatic the changes are. In some spots, the shoreline has receded thousands of feet from where it was 10 years ago. 

The sea’s shallowness means huge amounts of new playa, or lakebed, have been exposed. It is particularly noticeable on the south end where the inflows of the New and Alamo Rivers deposit sediment as their deltas grow.

Probably around 2007, I got a chance to go up in a Cessna for a ride around the Salton Sea. It really opened up my eyes to how the sea is so diverse on the shoreline. You’ve got these areas of marshes with lots of wildlife, and at the south end there’s a lot of volcanic formations and geothermal activity. I saw the mud pots in the middle of the sea, boiling up. 

Being up in that Cessna, I saw patterns on the Earth that were so visually striking. I was able to get a better perspective. That was amazing. It was a great way to take pictures, because I wasn’t trudging through mud.

Over the years, I probably rode in a Cessna four or five times photographing the sea for different situations. Back in the day, I would ask my editor, “Hey can I take a Cessna up?” and they’d say yes. It was like $120. We’d fly out of a little airport in Bermuda Dunes.

Normally, the pilot would let us open the window. They open from the bottom, about 4 or 5 inches. Just enough to stick my lens out and snap away in the high winds. My eyes would be watering, and I was trying to keep them open and take pictures at the same time. It was kind of difficult, but I learned a lot about aerial technology on those rides.

We’d go around the entire shoreline, and I found a lot of good locations. I tried to remember them so I could go back someday and photograph them again. I wished I could fly, so I could do some circles and take the pictures I really wanted to. I also recall thinking, “Man, I wish I had a camera that could fly.” 

I tried to figure out workarounds, thinking, “what if I bought a big telescoping pole, and put a camera on it, and I could get it up like 30 yards in the air?” 

So it was nice for the drone technology to finally come along.

The Life or Death of the Salton Sea?

This huge California lake was a haven for birds and fish, and aimed to be a paradise for man but toxic chemicals and salt may be doing it in

Robert H. Boyle

Flanked by the Chocolate Mountains and the fertile green acres of California's Imperial Valley, the Salton Sea is one of the most spectacular and bizarre bodies of water in the United States. Today it is saltier than the nearby Pacific Ocean but it began life some 90 years ago as a freshwater lake. That was when the rampaging Colorado River broke loose from its channel and swung northwest, flowing into the Salton Sink, a desert basin whose center was 278 feet below sea level. In the year and more it took engineers to redirect the river, the overflow had created a "sea" 45 miles long and 17 miles wide.

Enormous heat (up to 120 degrees F in summer) and control of the inflow of Colorado water, then and now largely used to irrigate the immensely rich agriculture of the Imperial Valley, evaporated the sea somewhat it is 35 miles long now. It became a major stopover for migrating birds and a prime fishing site. In the late 1950s its sunny weather and stunning scenery drew developers, who spent millions laying down streets and pipelines for seaside resorts like Salton City and the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club. But the sea kept filling up with salt and chemicals from Imperial Valley runoff. Today its salt content is so high, and getting higher, that it threatens the existence of the saltwater fish eventually stocked in it. The ambitious resorts long ago turned into near ghost towns. Recently species of birds at the sea began dying mysteriously by the thousands. A local commission is studying ways to save the sea. Whatever plans they propose will be costly and it is uncertain who will be willing to pay for them.

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