Drive southbound from Joshua Tree on the 111 and find, to your right, the Salton Sea, the behemoth salt lake. Whenever I try to explain where it’s at, I say, well, it’s kind of by San Diego, kind of by Palm Springs, kind of by Yuma,” says Tyler Brinkerhoff, Imperial Valley historian. That’s when the Imperial Land Company encouraged global settlers to immigrate to the valley and stake a claim on the richly productive land. It becomes clear that Imperial County is a sandbox of extremes, a place where land use can quickly turn into a lose-lose game. In 1905, torrential rainfall caused the irrigation canals that branched from the Colorado River to flood.