The salt and sea is a gigantic lake in the middle of the desert, a mind-boggling amount

of water, where there isn't supposed to be any.

It is majestic, it really is, it looks like one of the Great Lakes, I think.

Or I imagine I've never been to the Great Lakes.

The edge of the sea blurs against the horizon.

If you squint, you can see mountains in the distance.

If you go down there during the fall when the birds come and they're really showing up in numbers

down in the wetlands, it's absolutely gorgeous.

But at the same time, I carry my coconut-scented sunscreen that I could put under my nostrils

so that if the wind shifts and it's a bad day and there's

sulfide burps, you can cope with the smell of rotten eggs.

As you get closer to the shore, you can see that it's the dead fish, the stench,

the remnants of development.

I'm Sarah Weiman and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's

strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we visit the salt and sea, a ghostly lake in the Californian desert.

We hear the story of how humans desperate for water created this lake,

the size of the city of Los Angeles, and then how their thirst turned toxic.

More after this.

What does water mean in California specifically?

I mean, yeah, I mean water is everything.

This is Todd Loose.

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