Matsubara's Modern Ruins Pics

(These were all taken years ago on a 35 mm film camera - sorry the quality is mediocre.)

The first photo was taken in 1996. It's the ruins of a town at the base of Unzen-Fugendake volcano in Kyushu, SW Japan, which blew up in the early 90s, burying this town under pyroclastic flows. At the time, you could still go into the houses (although it was illegal, we got away with taking a peek). It was eerie to see a child's bedroom on the second floor of a house with the first floor buried. Drawings still hung on the walls and toys were scattered around. We both wondered what happened to the family that lived there. They have turned this into some sort of historical exhibit now, but I've yet to go back.







The rest are the ruins of the "South Bay Yacht Club and Hotel" which was built on the shores of the Salton Sea, a huge salt lake in the central southern California desert, south off Palm Springs. In the 50s and 60s, developers dreamed of turning this into a "seaside" resort community. many miles of roads were laid out, palm trees planted, and a few facilities like this were built. But rising water levels and pollution killed off those dreams and the community never took hold. If you go there today, it's a surreal environment, looking like a giant crystal blue lake from afar, but a mucky brown up close, with the stench of filth and dead fish all around. Temps routinely reach the 110s, as they were the day we wen, in 1994.




The approach




welcome



pool and yacht club, complete with ballroom.



view from the ballroom



stairs to observation deck



view of the sea from observation deck




the hotel - swanky!



ummm....



hehe



room with a view




I read recently that this has all been bulldozed now. Too bad.

There is a movie out about the Salton Sea and its quirky history:

"Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea"

http://www.saltonseadoc.com/

Is this the lake that turned to salt? I saw something about it a while ago on Discovery or some channel like that.

This reminds me of a hotel in the Fla.Keys that my wife and I stopped off at a few years ago. They had a dolphin show and at one time (60's) this was the big time. They still had some hangers-on from those days. It was kind of depressing...then I realized that no one knew we were there and it was a real "Hotel California" type situation so we paid our bar tab and got the hell out of there.

But it has gotten progressively dirty as well.

There is a trailer on the website I linked to. It's pretty good - check it out. There is even a glimpse of the "yacht club" in it!

Rather interesting, actually...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea


The Salton Sea is an inland saline lake, located in the Colorado Desert in Southern California, north of the Imperial Valley. The lake covers a surface area of approximately 376 square miles (974 km²), making it the largest lake in California.


History

Once part of the vast inland sea which covered the area, the endorheic Salton Sink was the site of a major salt mining operation.

...
'Salt Creek' first shows up on a map in 1867 and 'Salton Station' is on a railroad map from 1900 although this place had been there as a rail stop since the late 1870s. The name 'Salton' appears to be from the fact that they had been mining salt in the area at least as early as 1815. A yearly expedition traveled to the area to mine salt for Los Angeles residents. With the extension of a rail line through the basin, large scale salt mining started in 1884. After that, the general area is referred to as the 'Salton Sink' or the 'Salton Basin'. ‘Sink’ or ‘basin’ referring to the natural bowl type geography of the area.


Creation of the current Salton Sea

The Salton Sea as it exists today is the aftermath of a man-made environmental disaster that occurred between 1905 and 1907, when improper management of irrigation routes from the Colorado River caused the river to flow unchecked into the Salton Sink for some two years.

Early efforts to provide irrigation to the fertile Imperial Valley region had culminated in the creation of the Imperial Canal, leading from intakes on the Colorado River to the below-sea-level Imperial Valley. As this waterway became blocked by the heavy load of silt deposited by the river, the California Development Company, which was responsible for the irrigation system, decided to build a diversion channel on Mexican territory...However, the ill-advised new route crossed unstable river delta that was regularly reshaped during floods of the Colorado, and the CDC did not have the funds necessary to construct a proper headgate system at the intake from the Colorado river to prevent accidents if the river flooded.

In 1905, massive flooding of some 150,000 cfs on the Colorado overran the diversion channel and diverted the river into the Salton Sink. Cutback erosion of the soft soil in the channel deepened it and created a steadily-growing waterfall that worked its way back towards the location of the river intake, with the falls at one point reaching 100 feet in height. Scientists worried that if the cutback reached the river itself, the river would be permanently diverted into the Salton Sink, and the cutback might even continue up through Yuma, Arizona. The Southern Pacific Railroad, which had substantial business interests in the region, spent some three million dollars (under intense government pressure) over two years to stop the river's flow into the Salton Sink. In 1907 these efforts finally succeeded, and the river resumed its natural course towards the Gulf of California.

The residual water from this ecological catastrophe formed the Salton Sea of today, and continuing man-made agricultural runoff has been largely responsible for sustaining it. ... As the basin filled, the town of Salton, a Southern Pacific Railroad siding and parts of the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation land were submerged.

The Salton Sea disaster was a significant part of the impetus behind the construction of dams on the Colorado River, notably Hoover Dam.


...

In the 1920s, the Salton Sea developed into a tourist attraction, because of its water recreation, and the waterfowl attracted to the area. The Salton Sea remains a major resource for migrating and wading birds. It has also had some success as a fishery in the past, with species such as mullet, corvina, sargo, and tilapia being introduced to the Sea from the 1930s to the 1950s. Since then, increased salinity, pollution, and weather events have killed off most fish species other than the adaptable and hardy Tilapia.

...variations in agricultural runoff cause fluctuations in water level (and flooding of surrounding communities in the 1950s and 1960s), and the relatively high salinity of the inflow feeding the Sea has resulted in an ever increasing level of salinity. By the 1960s, it was becoming apparent that the salinity of the Salton Sea was continuing to rise, jeopardizing some of the species living in it. The Salton Sea currently has a salinity exceeding 40‰ (parts per thousand), making it saltier than ocean water, and many species of fish are no longer able to survive in the Salton. It is believed that once the salinity surpasses 44‰, only the tilapia will be able to survive. Fertilizer runoff combined with the increasing salinity and inflow of highly polluted water from the northward-flowing New River have resulted in large algal blooms and elevated bacteria levels. The New River is considered to be the single most polluted river in America.



So, although there were large deposits of salt from the prehistoric inland sea, the lake was relatively fresh at the time it came into being 100 years ago. But the water feeding it is salty, and as the water evaporates, leaves an increasingly saltier lake.

I've never had the nerve to actually do it myself (tresspassing laws and all).

Here's a favorite site of mine with photos of an old mental institution that is not far from where I grew up. It's since been bulldozed to make way for a new Wal-Mart. :grr:

http://www.ohiotrespassers.com/dixmont.html

And... kick.

Here is a neat site about Japanese modern ruins called "Ruins Deflationary Spiral"

http://nifty.amikai.com/amiweb/browser.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhome.f01.itscom.net%2Fspiral%2Fresearch.html&langpair=2%2C1&lang=JA&toolbar=yes&c_id=nifty

I put it through a crude translator for you. Sorry if it doesn't always make sense...


To see each ruins collection, you need to click where it says ?No.1, No.2 etc. on the top left of each photo.

I had seen a similar site years ago and forgot it, but I'd love to check out some of those places.

:hi:

Is that the one that killed the two German vulcanologists?

Speaking of movies and the Salton Sea, there's a contemporary noir film of the same name, partially set at the Salton Sea, which I think it highly underrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Unzen

"On June 3, 1991, the volcano erupted violently, possibly as a result of depressurization of the magma column after a landslide in the crater. A pyroclastic flow reached 4.5 km from the crater and claimed the lives of 43 scientists and journalists, including volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft and Harry Glicken."



The Shimabara peninsula is a really beautiful area, Shimabara is like a small Kyoto, with an old-fashioned feel, and the clearest water with beautiful fish running through the little channels on the sides of the streets.

Unzen is an impressive and beautiful group of mountains, too. Must have been terrifying. Pyroclastic flows are way scarier than lava.

Here is the link, although it no longer seems to work.

http://www.nationalgeo.com/eye/volcanoes/av/runaway.ram


Here is some news footage from the time. Not as good, but at least the video works.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GbljJNMzLT4

Only it was on one of those dumb American extreme video shows, where they edit to the point of ridiculousness.