History of Bombay Beach

Twenty-four years after a failed levee on the Colorado River flooded the Salton Sink, the townsite of Bombay Beach was established on October 8, 1929 by R.E. Gilligan along the shore of the new Salton Sea. Over the next few decades, our town attracted recreationists from Southern California and beyond with a rare combination of desert living and water sports, including water skiing, boat racing, and fishing. In these early years, many of the property owners lived out of travel trailers while spending their weekends in Bombay Beach.

The Salton Sea became a renowned fishing destination after the California Department of Fish and Game stocked the lake with game fish such as Sargo, Croaker, and Corvina transplanted from the Sea of Cortez in the early 1950’s. Bombay Beach developed a reputation among anglers as a particularly good fishing spot, and several businesses sprung up in town to serve the fishermen who arrived with their families to troll the waters for prized fish, such as the large Orangemouth Corvina.

As mobile homes with add-ons and some freestanding homes slowly replaced- or, more often than not, incorporated- the travel trailers of yesteryear, more full-time residents made a home here. Water tanks and outhouses would no longer suffice; the community would require more infrastructure and facilities to support the burgeoning year-round population. To this end, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors approved the formation of the Bombay Beach Community Services District in 1961 to provide community management and maintenance services. In the ensuing decades, Bombay Beach looked more and more like a full-fledged town as new amenities were built out. A water system was installed in 1970, followed by a sewage system. A community center was built next to a large park with basketball and volleyball courts for the children growing up here. The streets were even paved! Bombay Beach had grown to include 2 marinas, 4 bars, a market, a hardware store, an arts and crafts store, a motel, a church, and a trailer park. This period of growth and prosperity didn’t last long, however.

The level of the Salton Sea began to rise, starting in 1976 with the floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina and gradually increasing over the next two decades, flooding shoreline communities all around the Sea. Bombay Beach was particularly hard hit. After the businesses and homes closest to the sea were flooded, a berm was built around Bombay Beach to protect the structures that the water hadn’t reached yet. Unfortunately, the structures on the other side of the berm were left to corrode and eventually collapse into the sea.

The story of Bombay Beach over the next few decades is one of survival. Large algae blooms depleted oxygen in the sea during the summer months, resulting in fishkills that lined the shore with millions of carcasses. The large bird population that had come to feed off of the prolific fishery in the Salton Sea was decimated by avian botulism contracted by eating the rotting fish. One by one, each species of game fish would become extinct in the Salton Sea as the salinity rose beyond their tolerances, leaving only small populations of invasive tilapia and the native desert pupfish. The marinas were no longer functional. All but one restaurant shut their doors. While the market remained open, other stores eventually shuttered and the motel ceased operations. Residents left Bombay Beach in droves, many abandoning their homes with their furniture and other possessions still inside. The town stopped holding its beloved annual holiday festival and parade; there just didn’t seem to be much to celebrate anymore. Yet throughout these difficult times, some residents stayed put and held out hope for better days.

Better days would eventually come. In the new millennium, artists found Bombay Beach to be an ideal- if unlikely- place to create and display their work. In 2015, a group these artists held the first Bombay Beach Biennale, which has become a world-renowned celebration of art, music, and philosophy. In the years since, Bombay Beach and the Biennale have attracted some of the world’s foremost artists and thinkers to the shores of the Salton Sea to share their ideas and creations. In 2022, the community brought back the beloved holiday celebration and parade with the first annual Harvest Festival.

It’s clear at first glance that our town is a unique place. But we believe that with an understanding of our town’s history, visitors to Bombay Beach will recognize how truly remarkable our community is.