Bombay Beach is a
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...
(CDP) in
Imperial County, California
Imperial County is a county located on the southeast border of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 179,702, ranking as the least populous county in Southern California. The county seat and largest city is ...
, United States. It is located on the
Salton Sea
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly salinity, saline endorheic lake in Riverside County, California, Riverside and Imperial County, California, Imperial counties in Southern California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the S ...
, west-southwest of Frink
and is the lowest community in the United States, located below sea level. The population was 231 at the 2020 census, down from 295 in 2010, down from 366 in 2000. It is part of the
El Centro, California,
metropolitan statistical area.
Bombay Beach was once a popular getaway for beachgoers until the 1980s, when the draining and increasing salinity of the Salton Sea destroyed the lake's ecosystem and drove businesses and private landowners out of the area, rendering Bombay Beach a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
. Despite this, by 2018, a number of people had moved into the area, and the town's many abandoned structures and features from its past have drawn visitors back in. A 2018 article in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' stated that it was "enjoying a rebirth of sorts with an influx of artists, intellectuals and hipsters who have turned it into a bohemian playground."
The
Bombay Beach Biennale, an annual art festival, is held here.
History
During the 1950s, Bombay Beach was a popular beach-going destination. Celebrities such as
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...
,
the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American Rock music, rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian Wilson, Brian, Dennis Wilson, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their f ...
, and
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, comedian, entertainer and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwi ...
frequented the luxury resorts along the Salton Sea, which was known for its fishing, boating and water skiing. The area attracted half a million tourists annually, rivaling
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park ( ) is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The p ...
.
Bombay Beach's decline began in the 1970s, when the runoff (full of salty chemicals) led to a warning that the salinity of the lake would no longer sustain wildlife; that occurred by the early 1980s. Many residents around the Salton Sea, including those in Bombay Beach, were eventually driven out by the odor of the dying fish, the fear of health problems, and the flooding and the draining of the Salton Sea. Many of the remaining residents are reportedly either too poor to move out or too attached to the history of the area to leave.
A report by the ''
Pacific Institute'' in September 2019 stated that ten years earlier, "there were some 100 million fish in the Sea. Now, more than 97 percent of those fish are gone."
Most of the few residents use golf carts to get around, since the nearest gas station is away in
Niland. There are two stores in the town, one of which is a convenience store, and the closest hospital is over 45 minutes away in
Brawley. The
Ski Inn bar and restaurant is the only eating and drinking establishment in the town.
The "Bombay Beach Drive-In" is an art installation consisting of old, abandoned cars at a
drive-in theater
A drive-in theater/theatre or drive-in cinema is a form of movie theater, cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor movie screen, a projection booth, a concession stand, and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, c ...
. A visitor in 2019 wrote that there were many "discarded homes and trailers long-since abandoned" and that many of the buildings were "windowless husks blanketed in graffiti, surrounded by broken furniture and rubble."
The derelict "living ghost town" status of Bombay Beach has attracted many photographers, filmmakers,
urban explorers, and tourists.
The town, as well as others on the shores of the Salton Sea, is one of the lowest settlements in elevation in North America. The local
American Legion
The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is an Voluntary association, organization of United States, U.S. war veterans headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It comprises U.S. state, state, Territories of the United States, U.S. terr ...
, Post 801, had 36 members in 2016 and closed down "for a few years" before reopening as a volunteer-run facility.
In 2018, as people began to move back into Bombay Beach, house prices had risen; some bungalows were selling for "tens of thousands of dollars."
The community has held the Bombay Beach Biennale each spring since 2016, inviting "artists, academics, writers, and film-makers to create work, give lectures, and stage happenings". The 2020 Biennale was postponed due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
.
The population of Bombay Beach has been described as "mostly elderly residents" who "live in a grid of mobile homes and eccentric (and, sometimes, elaborate) small homes and shacks."
Geography
Bombay Beach is located in Southern California's
Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert () is a hot desert and ecoregion in North America that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the Southwestern United States (in Arizona and California). It ...
.
Bombay Beach is located on the east shore of the
Salton Sea
The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly salinity, saline endorheic lake in Riverside County, California, Riverside and Imperial County, California, Imperial counties in Southern California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the S ...
and, like many communities along its shores, has had to contend with fluctuating water levels, reducing size of the lake and increasing salinity. A berm was built in the 1970s to protect the west end of the town, but a portion of the town beyond the berm was either submerged or half-buried in mud.
Bombay Beach marks the southern end of the
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental Fault (geology)#Strike-slip faults, right-lateral strike-slip transform fault that extends roughly through the U.S. state of California. It forms part of the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Paci ...
, where the southern terminus of the San Andreas transitions into the
Brawley Seismic Zone.
Art
Bombay Beach features a large number of art pieces and installations around the town and along the beach.
Demographics
The
2020 United States census reported that Bombay Beach had a population of 231. The population density was . The racial makeup of Bombay Beach was 146 (63.2%)
White
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
, 21 (9.1%)
African American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
, 7 (3.0%)
Native American, 0 (0.0%)
Asian, 1 (0.4%)
Pacific Islander
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe th ...
, 34 (14.7%) from
other races, and 22 (9.5%) from two or more races.
Hispanic or Latino of any race were 56 persons (24.2%).
The whole population lived in households. There were 132 households, out of which 23 (17.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 32 (24.2%) were married-couple households, 6 (4.5%) were
cohabiting couple households, 48 (36.4%) had a female householder with no partner present, and 46 (34.8%) had a male householder with no partner present. 68 households (51.5%) were one person, and 38 (28.8%) were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 1.75.
[ There were 56 ]families
Family (from ) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as ...
(42.4% of all households).
The age distribution was 22 people (9.5%) under the age of 18, 14 people (6.1%) aged 18 to 24, 32 people (13.9%) aged 25 to 44, 69 people (29.9%) aged 45 to 64, and 94 people (40.7%) who were 65years of age or older. The median age was 60.2years. For every 100 females, there were 106.2 males.[
There were 369 housing units at an average density of , of which 132 (35.8%) were occupied. Of these, 89 (67.4%) were owner-occupied, and 43 (32.6%) were occupied by renters.][
]
Government
In the California State Legislature
The California State Legislature is the bicameral state legislature of the U.S. state of California, consisting of the California State Assembly (lower house with 80 members) and the California State Senate (upper house with 40 members). ...
, Bombay Beach is in , and . In the United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...
, Bombay Beach is in .
Fire protection and emergency medical services in Bombay Beach are provided by the Imperial County Fire Department and the Bombay Beach Volunteer Fire Department, the latter of which consists of one member.
Law enforcement in Bombay Beach is provided by the Imperial County Sheriff's Office North County Patrol Division.
Water service is provided by the Coachella Valley Water District.
In media
Music
Florian-Ayala Fauna of the music duo ''uncertain'' grew up in Bombay Beach. Fauna credits the place as an inspiration to her music. According to Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
-based art community Artchipel, Fauna said the place had a "big impact on her childhood and became a major influence in her life." In an interview with Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
alternative newspaper
An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting ...
''The Public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
''s Cory Perla, she described it as "a very kind of post-apocalyptic-looking town."
Bombay Beach is the subject of the 2019 single "Bombay Beach" by the Minneapolis
Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...
blues rock
Blues rock is a fusion music genre, genre and form of rock music, rock and blues music that relies on the chords/scales and instrumental improvisation of blues. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electri ...
band The Dead Century.
Sports
American football
American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...
safety
Safety is the state of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.
Meanings
The word 'safety' entered the English language in the 1 ...
Cedric Thompson for the Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The Vikings compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. Founded in 1960 as ...
of the National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...
(NFL) also grew up in Bombay Beach, California. He became one of the primary subjects of the 2011
The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...
documentary '' Bombay Beach'' directed by Alma Har'el
Alma Har'el (; born July 2, 1975) is an Israeli-American music video and film director. She is best known for her 2019 feature film debut '' Honey Boy'', for which she won a Directors Guild of America Award.
Her 2011 documentary '' Bombay Beach ...
. He later cited boredom in Bombay Beach as his inspiration for pro football.
Filming
''Bombay Beach'' is a documentary film about some residents of the community, made by Israeli-born filmmaker Alma Har’el, and described by ''The New York Times'' as a "surreal documentary". The film won first prize in the documentary section of the Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...
in 2011.
A 2013 promotional video for the fifth season of Animal Planet
Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel focusing on the animal kingdom owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1 ...
's ''River Monsters
''River Monsters'' is a British wildlife Documentary film, documentary television series produced for Animal Planet by Icon Films of Bristol, United Kingdom. It is hosted by Angling, angler and biologist Jeremy Wade, who travels around the gl ...
'' was filmed at Bombay Beach.
Austrian singer Christina Stürmer
Christina Stürmer (born 9 June 1982) is an Austrian singer and songwriter. Born and raised in Linz, she rose to fame as the runner-up of the inaugural season of the ORF eins television talent series ''Starmania (TV series), Starmania''. Follow ...
used Bombay Beach as one of the settings for her video of the song "Millionen Lichter" ("A Million Lights)".
In the CBS police procedural
The police procedural, police show, or police crime drama is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasises the investigative procedure of police officers, police detectives, or law enforcement agency, law enforcement agencies ...
series ''The Mentalist
''The Mentalist'' is an American procedural drama television series that ran from September 23, 2008, until February 18, 2015, broadcasting 151 episodes over seven seasons, on CBS. Created by Bruno Heller, who was also its executive producer, t ...
'', the first episode of the sixth season "The Desert Rose" was filmed in Bombay Beach, California. The production team created a sign for the fictional "Borrego Gas Diner" to stand-in for the local bar and restaurant Ski Inn.
In 2015, the film ''Sky
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...
'' opens with an unhappily married French couple on vacation in the deserts of Southern California. While visiting Bombay Beach, they mention its potential for a very large earthquake.
Bombay Beach is featured in the 4th season of ''NCIS: Los Angeles'' ("Red Part 2")
Video games
The town of Sandy Shores in the 2013 video game ''Grand Theft Auto V
''Grand Theft Auto V'' is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the seventh main entry in the Grand Theft Auto, ''Grand Theft Auto'' series, following 2008's ''Grand Theft Auto IV'', and ...
'' is partially based on Bombay Beach.
See also
* Southern Border Region
References
External links
Bombay Beach Community Services District
Bombay Beach in 2013 on Super Paranormal
*
* The 2006 documentary film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...
br>''Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea''
(narrated by John Waters
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...
) documented the lives of the inhabitants of Bombay Beach, Niland, and Salton City, as well as the ecological issues associated with the Sea.
{{authority control
Census-designated places in Imperial County, California
Salton Sea
El Centro metropolitan area
Populated places in the Colorado Desert
Census-designated places in California