Off-road to Former Naval Auxillary Air Station (Salton Sea Test Base), Salton Sea, California

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Former Salton Sea Test Base (Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea), was a United States Navy military facility located eight miles south of Salton City, California on the west shore of the Salton Sea. In September 2016, the BLM designated the former SSTB an area of critical environmental concern and the property is now closed to the public. The old dirt road into the base has sand drifts that will require 4WD. It was an auxiliary field to Naval Air Station San Diego commissioned in 1942, had a barracks 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 tests of the manned 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. In 2001 the United States Bureau of Reclamation used the site to remove salt from the Salton Sea, as high salinity is a major problem facing the inland lake. They used modified snowmaking 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. Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea supported Naval Outlying Field Clark's Dry Lake, 27 miles away. Paramount Studios filmed the war movie Wake Island here in 1942. Just west of there, the 1943 Humphrey Bogart war movie Sahara was filmed. In 1944-45 a series of classified B-29 practice flights were made from Wendover, Utah to the Salton Sea. At the sea, the crew dropped dummy atomic bombs onto a floating white raft and other targets. The first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 by Tibbets’ Enola Gay crew was based on a prototype first tested at the Salton Sea. The Atomic Energy Commission and its contractor Sandia Corporation acquired the base from the Navy in 1946. It was renamed the Salton Sea Test Base and used as a highly sophisticated bombing range. The Salton Sea rose and the Imperial Valley became increasingly populated, making the location less and less suitable for testing. The main recreation facility, the San Felipe Lodge, which had a beautiful pool outside & nice amenities. Sandia and the Atomic Energy Commission found a new, more isolated location near Tonopah, Nevada, and ceased operations at the Salton Sea Test Base in 1961. In the postwar period, the continuing rise of the waters of the Salton Sea were a perpetual problem, and a series of dikes were built to prevent the Test Base from being flooded. However, the were no dikes to protect the Navy runways south of the base. The Salton Sea location was taken over by NAF El Centro for parachute tests for the space program for awhile, and for Marine and SEAL training exercises, until 1979. As of 2002, the Salton Sea base was totally abandoned, and will probably eventually be incorporated in the adjacent wildlife refuge.

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