The west shore of the Salton Sea was platted out in the late 1950s as a resort — streets named, lots sold, marinas dug, a golf course put in. Most of the streets are still there. Almost nothing else is.

What is there instead is the most useful cluster of services anywhere on the sea: a 24-hour truck stop, a couple of fast food counters, a motel and a Dollar General, all within a mile of Highway 86. If you are circling the sea, this is where you refuel and use a clean bathroom. If you came looking for a waterfront, this is not that.

Quick Links

• What is open
• Getting to the water (you mostly cannot)
• Desert Shores
• Is it worth the drive

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What Is Open

Everything below is clustered at the Highway 86 and Marina Drive interchange, not down by the water.

Red Earth Casino Travel Center

The most useful stop on the whole sea, and it is not close. Twenty-five fueling stations including RV and large-vehicle islands, diesel, showers, restrooms, laundry, a dump station, an ATM and a small store.

3089 Norm Niver Road, Thermal, CA 92274 · (760) 395-1200

The mailing address says Thermal; it is on Highway 86 a few miles north of Salton City, on Torres-Martinez tribal land.

Hours: 24 hours.

The practical note: the food is roller-grill and coffee, not a restaurant. But the showers and 24-hour restrooms make this the single best-equipped stop for anyone doing the full loop.

Salton City Travel Plaza

Fuel, plus a KFC and a Pizza Hut Express under the same roof.

2084 South Marina Drive, Salton City

KFC: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, drive-thru, (760) 394-1024.

Pizza Hut Express: limited menu, carryout only.

Dollar General

Water, snacks, sunscreen, the things you forgot.

2110 Service Road, Salton City · (760) 394-6883

The Motel by the Sea

Four suites, queen beds, a shared fridge and microwave, a rooftop deck, a fire pit. It calls itself the only motel in Salton City and nothing contradicts that.

1008 Ontario Avenue, Salton City · (760) 394-0062

Cost: rates by phone only.

Worth knowing: if you want to be on the sea at first light for birding at the refuge, or you want to see the playa at sunrise without a 5 a.m. departure from Palm Springs, this is more or less the only option that is not a campground.

There is also a Mexican restaurant, the Alamo, on Marina Drive. Its current hours are not listed anywhere reliable, so call before you plan around it.

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Getting to the Water

Here is the honest version, and it is not what the maps suggest.

There is no verified public shoreline access or working boat ramp on the west shore.

The state’s boating database still lists three facilities out here — West Shores in Salton City, Salton Sea Beach Marina, and a launch at Desert Shores. That database is a registry of what was built, not a status page, and it carries no open-or-closed marker at all. Do not read it as a guide.

What the state says elsewhere is more revealing. Its own project documents describe the Desert Shores marina channels as “isolated from the main water body” — that is the state, in its own words, saying the channels no longer reach the sea.

For comparison: at the state park across the water, Varner Harbor is closed to vessel access until further notice because of declining water levels. That is the developed, staffed, funded facility. The unmaintained private ramps on this side are not in better shape.

The old West Shores golf course is gone too — not closed, gone. One account notes that not a single blade of grass survives.

If you want to stand at the water’s edge legally, the two places to do it are Salton Sea State Recreation Area on the northeast shore and the wildlife refuge at the south end. Both have signed public access, restrooms and staff.

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Desert Shores

A small community north of Salton City built around a set of boat channels that no longer connect to the sea.

There is a state project to fix that — the Desert Shores Channel Restoration Project, which would refill the five southernmost channels, reconnect them, and build about thirty acres of managed aquatic habitat along with a non-motorised boat access point and a public viewing area.

Two things to know about it. The deliverables would be the first real public water access on this shore in decades. And as of the most recent fact sheet, dated April 2025, the project was still in planning and design, with land rights and environmental work each about a quarter complete. The schedule on that sheet showed implementation starting in 2025. It did not.

So: worth watching, not worth driving out for yet.

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Is It Worth the Drive

As a destination, no. As part of a loop, genuinely yes.

Highway 86 is the faster road. If you drive down the east shore on 111 for the ruins, the art and the wildlife refuge, then come back up 86, you get the whole sea in one day and you refuel somewhere with showers instead of somewhere with one pump. The west shore is also the way to Anza-Borrego, via the county road that leaves Highway 86 at Salton City.

What you get out here that you do not get on the east shore is scale. Long straight road, water on one side, nothing on the other, and a grid of empty streets with names on them. It is a different flavour of strange — less ruin, more blueprint for a city nobody built.

Go between October and April, like everywhere else down there. And check the air quality before you commit: the South Coast AQMD runs a live hydrogen sulfide monitoring page for the Salton Sea with email alerts, and the smell is worst when the wind comes out of the south or southeast.

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Bottom line: Treat the west shore as the return leg and the resupply stop rather than the main event. The things worth looking at are across the water — Bombay Beach, Slab City, Salvation Mountain — and the full Salton Sea guide covers how to string them together.