Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea, was a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

military facility located eight miles south of

Salton City, California Salton City is a census-designated place (CDP) in Imperial County, California, Imperial County, California. It is the largest Imperial County development on the Salton Sea coast. It is part of the El Centro, California Metropolitan Statistical Ar ...

on the west shore of the

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf o ...

History

It was an auxiliary field to

Naval Air Station San Diego Naval Air Station North Island or NAS North Island , at the north end of the Coronado peninsula on San Diego Bay in San Diego, California, is part of the largest aerospace-industrial complex in the United States Navy – Naval Base Coronado (NBC ...

commissioned in 1942, and had a

barracks Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...

for over 600 men constructed there. It was disestablished in 1946. Naval Air Facility El Centro then took over the facility using it for

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

tests of the crewed space program and other military systems until 1979. There remains little if anything of the former field. The Salton Sea has taken over much of the

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...

. In 2001 the

United States Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...

used the site to remove

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...

from the Salton Sea, as high

salinity Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensionless and equal ...

is a major problem facing the inland lake. They used modified

snowmaking Snowmaking is the production of snow by forcing water and pressurized air through a "snow gun", also known as a "snow cannon". Snowmaking is mainly used at ski resorts to supplement natural snow. This allows ski resorts to improve the reliabilit ...

equipment and mine waste removal vehicles and continued testing for a year; however high energy costs and air quality issues forced the termination of this project. After closure, it was acquired by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

.https://eplanning.blm.gov/public_projects/lup/66459/20012656/250017248/ACEC_Lake_Cahuilla_Subregion.pdf Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea supported Naval Outlying Field Clark's Dry Lake, 27 miles away.

Also see

* California during World War II

External links

History of Salton Sea Naval Auxiliary Field
1942 establishments in California 1979 disestablishments in California Military installations closed in 1946 Installations of the United States Navy in California Salton Sea History of Imperial County, California Buildings and structures in Imperial County, California

{{ImperialCountyCA-geo-stub Closed installations of the United States Navy Military installations established in 1942