University of Nevada, Reno The Promise of Pleasure and Prosperity in the Desert Landscape, 1958-1976: A Comparative Case Study of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History by Margarethe R. Eirenschmalz Dr. C. Elizabeth Raymond/Thesis Advisor December, 2018 © by Margarethe R. Eirenschmalz 2018 All Rights Reserved THE GRADUATE SCHOOL We recommend that the thesis prepared under our supervision by MARGARETHE R. EIRENSCHMALZ Entitled The Promise Of Pleasure And Prosperity In The Desert Landscape, 1958-1976: A Comparative Case Study Of Lake Tahoe And The Salton Sea be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS C. Elizabeth Raymond, Ph.D., Advisor William Rowley, Ph.D., Committee Member William Eubank, Ph.D., Graduate School Representative David W. Zeh, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School December, 2018 i Abstract In the early 1950s the Salton Sea was hailed as a desert paradise to rival Palm Springs and the Riviera. By 1976 it had become a blemish on the landscape of Southern California and little more than an agricultural sump. Lake Tahoe on the other hand has thrived as a tourist and recreational destination for over a century; even when its slopes had been denuded of much of its forests people were still eager to visit the area. A fundamental preference for a European landscape aesthetic explains the continued attraction of Lake Tahoe and the efforts that have been made on its behalf; while a rejection of the desert landscape aesthetic accounts for the neglect suffered by the Salton Sea’s reputation and environment. ii Table of Contents Introduction: Landscape Perceived………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 1: The Desert Aesthetic…………………………………………………………. 9 Chapter 2: The Palm and the Pine - Lake Tahoe……………………………………….. 50 Chapter 3: Of Pupfish and Cutthroat - The Salton Sea…………………………………. 71 Chapter 4: Welcome to Insert Name Here……………………………………………… 93 Conclusion: What could have been……………………………………………………. 130 Appendix A………………………….………………………………………………… 141 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 143 iii List of Images Image 1: Tahoe Paradise………………………………………………………………... 95 Image 2: Salton Riviera……………………………………………………………….... 95 Image 3: Aerial View of Desert Shore, California…………………………………...… 97 Image 4: Aerial View of Tahoe Keys Marina, South Lake Tahoe, CA………………… 97 Image 5: Salton Sea Vista………………………………………………………………. 99 Image 6: Lake Tahoe…………………………………………………………………… 99 Image 7: Greetings from the Salton Sea, Desert Shores……………………...……….. 102 Image 8: Greetings from Lake Tahoe…………………………………………...…….. 102 Image 9: Lake Tahoe: An Illustrated Guide and History…………………….……….. 104 Image 10: Salton Sea Story………………………………………….………………… 104 Image 11: North Shore Beach Yacht Club Line-up…………………………..……….. 107 Image 12: Cal-Neva Line-up……………………………………..…………………… 107 Image 13: Salton Bay Yacht Club Casino……………….……………………………. 108 Image 14: Barney’s Casino……………………………………………………………. 108 Image 15: 11 lb. Cutthroat……………......…………………………………………… 111 Image 16: Girl with Fish……………………...……………………………………….. 111 Image 17: The Salton Sea 500………………………………………………………… 113 Image 18: Lake Tahoe Mile-High Regatta………………………………...………….. 113 Image 19: Pretty Jimmie Bernard………………………………………………..……. 114 Image 20: Tahoe Keys………………………………………………………...………. 114 Image 21: School Girl Conquers Lake Tahoe………………...……………………….. 116 Image 22: L. B. Housewives Break Record for 10-mile Salton Sea Swim…………… 116 Image 23: The Gem of the Desert……………………..………………………………. 117 Image 24: Ninth Hole at Tahoe City……………………………………………...…… 117 Image 25: Miracle in the Desert……………………………………………….………. 122 Image 26: Tahoe Paradise……………………………………………………...……… 122 iv Image 27: Salton Sea Ashtray…………………………………………………………. 126 Image 28: Lake Tahoe………………………………………………………………… 126 Image 29: Lake Tahoe in the cool evergreen Shangi-La of the Sierras……..………… 139 Image 30: ‘Miracle in the Desert’ Salton City!.............................................................. 139 1 Introduction: Landscape Perceived When I stood on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, looking south, I could see the curve of the earth because from my perspective the lake ended in the horizon rather than a beach. Yet I knew this was an inland body of water because of the mountain range that rose above this oceanic horizon. This combination of apparently watery endlessness and the limits of geological formation felt distinctly different from the sense of vastness that I have experienced when visiting the Pacific shore and facing west. This difference is the result of several factors. The visual difference is perhaps the most obvious; despite the vast size of the Salton Sea I could see mountain ranges at the far edges of most sides of the valley regardless of where I was along the lake’s shoreline. More distinctive is the fact that the blue of the water did not simply melt into the blue of the sky. Even with the large size of the lake the air was not only hot but also dry and did not have the fishy, salty scent of the ocean. In spite of the oppressive heat, which in the more humid areas of the Imperial Valley gave me the sense of being suffocated in a gigantic pancake, I found standing at the shore of the Salton Sea to be very peaceful and comforting. That is not how I would describe my sensations when visiting a beach of the Pacific Ocean or the second object of my analysis, Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe makes me feel chilled, even on the warmest of days, perhaps it is its remarkably vivid blue color. I also experience a sense of confinement when visiting Lake Tahoe despite its size which, when compared to the alpine lakes I grew up around, is of gigantic dimensions. It is the mountainous crown surrounding Lake Tahoe with a comparative tight fit and the verticality of the forests that instill in me this sense of confinement which is more the result of my emotional 2 relationship and my cultural association with this type of landscape than it is the result of any quantifiable explanation. Landscape scholar Yi-Fu Tuan begins his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience with a similar anecdote. He describes how Paul Tillich, a German theologian, raised in a small, medieval town experienced feelings of “openness, infinity, unrestricted space” in the apparently contrary settings of the Baltic seashore and metropolitan Berlin.1 While I do not intend to compare such obviously distinctive environments as the seashore and the city in this analysis, my comparison between the Salton Sea and Lake Tahoe will demonstrate that though peripherally these two lakes could easily be lumped together as western American lakes, major water basins in desert areas, and as lakes of significant size, these lakes could hardly be more different if one were the ocean and the other the city. Lake Tahoe always evokes the image of a bright blue, cool, and pure surface of water surrounded by great green forests or snowy mountains, regardless of whether it is called Mountain Lake, Lake Bigler, or “Lake of the Sky.”2 Lake Tahoe is situated in the Sierra Nevada straddling the border between Nevada and California. The lake is twenty- two miles long and twelve miles wide. Its depth is 1636 feet and its surface lies 6,225 feet above sea level.3 Lake Tahoe was first discovered by European Americans in 1844, as John C. Frémont observed it during one of his survey explorations in the area. In 1859 the area around Lake Tahoe became a crucial lumber resource to support mining at the Comstock 1 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1977), 3-4. 2 George Wharton James, The Lake of the Sky: Lake Tahoe in the high Sierras of California and Nevada (Pasadena, CA: George Wharton James, 1915), Title Page. 3 Michael J. Makley, A Short History of Lake Tahoe (Reno: U of Nevada P, 2011), 1. 3 Lode, across the Washoe Valley, in Virginia City. Since this time, Lake Tahoe has been both appreciated and exploited in a variety of ways. The lumber industry left much of the lake basin denuded by the time mining on the Comstock came to an end, but even then some residents and entrepreneurs had already taken an interest in the preservation of the lake environment. This coexistence between preservation and economic interest has exemplified the lake’s existence since its discovery and frequently it has been much more of a struggle between the two sides than a matter of simple cooperation. The lake has been developed because of its beauty and purity, but this in turn has led to conditions that have threatened these very attributes. The Salton Sea is the latest inland body of water in a long succession of bodies of water filling the Salton Trough over the last several thousand years. The Salton Sea is located in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys in the Colorado Desert. The lake is about thirty-five miles long and over fifteen miles wide. Its average depth is 29.9 feet and its surface lies 232-235 feet below sea level.4 The Salton Sea in its current incarnation was accidentally created in 1905, due to a miscalculation on the part of engineers seeking to improve the irrigation canals and increase the flow of water to farmers in the Imperial Valley. The unique nature of the Salton Sea is that it is the first manmade iteration of Salton Trough lakes, collectively known as Lake Cahuilla, and that its ecological composition is dramatically different from that of the previous versions created between the Pleistocene period and the last 4 Kim Stringfellow, Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005 (Santa Fe: Center for American Places, 2005), 6; William deBuys, Salt Dreams: Land and Water in low-down California (Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1999), 7. 4 natural flooding of the trough in 1891.5 In the brief century of its existence, the history of the Salton Sea has been divisive, elusive, and complicated. Some environmentalists would like to see the Salton Trough revert to its pre-accident state while others value it as one of the few remaining large wetlands in California.