The Salton Sea is proof than man<nature. It's the story of an irrigation canal from the Colorado river overflowing and filling the old sea bed which is now mid-California desert. The new formed sea proved to be a fantastic place for water-skiing, sport fishing and developers started buying up land and building streets, hotels etc. Bombay Beach is one of those vacation towns and now it's a ghost-town. Why you ask? Well a few years back the Salton Sea started getting more saline and fish started dying off. The salty runoff from the agriculture fields continued filling the basin and water continues evaporating but the sea just sits there and gets more potent. So potent that when you first step out of the car all you smell is rotting fish in the blazing heat. The way to the fish-lined beach is rows of trailers and small run-down houses, some lived in, some not. A lot of the people who live here bought land when it had value and now it's virtually worthless so they can't afford to move anywhere else, or they don't want to move, after all, this is their home. I didn't take photos of the community but on the way to the beach there were some skeletons of old homes sunk halfway into the sand due to flooding. It's a very strange place. I suggest you look into it yourself. There's even a documentary on it.
Salton Sea