Joan Myers: Salt Dreams
CAE2222
Summary Note
The Salton Sea was re-created in 1905 when high spring flooding on the Colorado River crashed the canal gates leading into the developing Imperial Valley. This archive contains research materials for the book Salt Dreams by Joan Myers and historian William deBuys.Biographical Note
Joan Myers was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1944. She attended Stanford University, where her concentration on Renaissance and baroque music performance led to a B.A in 1966 and a M.A. in musicology in 1967. In the early 1970’s Myers turned to photography. She began as a large-format platinum-palladium printer, examining and photographing the relationships between people and the land. Her work has been the focus of three Smithsonian exhibitions, more than fifty solo and eighty group shows, and eleven books. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Center for Creative Photography, Denver Art Museum, George Eastman House, High Museum of Art, Minneapolis Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Modern Art, Nevada Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.
In 1999 she published Salt Dreams: Land and Water in Low-Down California, a book about the creation and subsequent life of the Salton Sea with writer William deBuys, which won the Western States Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. In 2002, the National Science Foundation awarded Myers an Antarctic Artists and Writer’s Grant to photograph at McMurdo Station, surrounding field stations, historic huts, and the South Pole during the 2002-2003 austral summer. Her four-year traveling SITES show entitled “Wondrous Cold: an Antarctic Journey” opened at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC in May 2006, accompanied by a book published by Smithsonian Books.
In the process of completing the Antarctica work, Myers gradually phased out platinum printing and began working entirely digitally, printing all her own work in her studio. In 2012, Myers’ book “The Jungle at the Door: A Glimpse of Wild India” was published by George F. Thompson Books. A book entitled “Fire and Ice: Timescapes”, published by Damiani Editore in 2015, centers on volcanic and geothermal sites around the world. “I’ve always been fascinated,” she says,” by what I cannot see and by what goes on beneath my feet.”. A collaboration with poet Nathaniel Tarn, entitled “The Persephones”, was published in 2016. Her most recent work concentrates on the myth of the American West and is entitled “Where the Buffalo Roamed: Images of the New West” (published by Damiani Editore in 2019). She and her husband, Bernie Lopez, moved to Tuscon, AZ in 2022.
Scope and Content
The Salton Sea is one of the world's largest inland seas and lowest spots on earth at -227 below sea level. It first existed as a prehistoric lake and was re-created in 1905 when high spring flooding on the Colorado River crashed the canal gates leading into the developing Imperial Valley. For the next 18 months the entire volume of the Colorado River rushed downward into the Salton Trough. By the time engineers were finally able to stop the breaching water in 1907, the Salton Sea had been born at 45 miles long and 20 miles wide – equaling about 130 miles of shoreline. The Salton Sea State Recreation Area covers 14 miles of the northeastern shore and has long been a popular site for campers, boaters, and anglers. Increasing salinity in the Salton Sea basin has limited the number of types of fish that can be found there, and most fish currently caught are Tilapia. Kayakers, campers, birdwatchers, photographers, and hikers enjoy the site's many recreation opportunities, even as they witness an environmental disaster caused irrigation runoff and drought. Salt Dreams by Joan Myers and historian William deBuys covers many aspects of the natural and cultural histories of the inland sea.
Materials include articles and documents about the Salton Sea and Imperial Valley of California, maps, government reports, printed tourist ephemera, and press material.
Arrangement
Inclusive Dates
Bulk Dates
Quantity / Extent
Language
Related Publications
Alexander, J.A. The Life of George Chaffey: A Story of Irrigation Beginnings in California and Australia. Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan & Co., 1928.
Appel, Mary Jane. Russell Lee: A Centenary Exhibition. San Marcos, TX: Texas State University, 2003.
Bancroft, Griffing. Lower California: A Cruise, The Flight of the Least Petrel. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1932.
Bean, Lowell John. Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972.
Bowers, Janice Emily. Shrubs and Trees of the Southwest Deserts. Tucson, AZ: Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, 1993.
Brandeis, Gayle. The Book of Dead Birds. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
Brown, John S. Routes to Desert Watering Places in the Salton Sea Region, California. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920.
Brown, John S. The Salton Sea Region, California: A Geographic, geologic, and hydrologic reconnaissance with a Guide to Desert Watering Places. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923.
Burdick, Arthur J. The Mystic Mid-Region: The Deserts of the Southwest. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904
Chase, J. Smeaton. California Desert Trail. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919.
Cleaveland, Agnes Morley. No Life for a Lady. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1977.
Crowe, Rosalie. Early Yuma: A Graphic History of Life on the American Nile. Yuma, AZ: Yuma County Historical Society, 1976.
Derby, George Horatio. Derby’s Report on Opening the Colorado, 1850-1851. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1969.
Farquhar, Francis P. The Books of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon: A Selected Bibliography. Austin, TX: W M Morrison Books, 1991.
Fradkin, Philip L. A River No More: The Colorado River and The West. New York, NY: Knopf, 1981.
Freeman, Lewis R. Down the Grandy Canyon. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1930.
Frisby, Karen J. Imperial Valley: The Greening of a Desert. El Centro, CA: Imperial Valley College Desert Museum Society, 1993.
Ganzel, Bill. Dust Bowl Descent. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Gifford, Edward Winslow. The Kamia of Imperial Valley. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931.
Hardy, R.W.H. Travels to the Interior of Mexico: In 1825, 1826, 1827, & 1828. Glorieta, NM: The Rio Grande Press, 1977.
Harris, Elizabeth. Townsite of Silsbee and Indian Well. Imperial, CA: Imperial Valley Pioneers, 1979.
Hendrickson, Paul. Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Ives, Joseph C. Report Upon the Colorado River of the West. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1969
Jensen, Joan M. Promise to the Land: Essays on Rural Women. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1991
Jensen, Joan M. With These Hands: Women Working the Land. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1981.
Karr, Bill. Fishing Salton Sea. North Shore, CA: Karr Enterprises, 1985.
Kennan, George. The Salton Sea: An Account of Harriman’s Fight with the Colorado River. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1917.
Kidwell, Art. In the Shadows of the Palms: Across the Years in Twentynine Palms vol.I & II. Twentynine Palms, CA: Desert Moon Press, 1986-1987.
Lee, Russell et al. Far from Main Street: Three Photographers in Depression-Era New Mexico. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1994.
Lee, Russell. Threads of Culture: Photography in New Mexico 1939-1943. Santa FeL NM: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993.
Lewellyn, Harry. Glovebox Guide to Unpaved California. Anaheim, CA: Glovebox Publications, 1993.
Lindsay, Lowell. The Anza-Borrego Desert Region: A Guide to the State Park and Adjacent Areas. Berkeley, CA: Wilderness Press, 1991.
Lower Colorado River Land Use Advisory Committee. The Lower Colorado River Land Use Plan. Washington DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1964.
Maharidge, Dale. And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: James Agee, Walker Evans, and the Rise and Fall of Cotton in the South. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1989.
Martin, Douglas D. Yuma Crossing. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1954.
McKee-Roberts, Kathryn. From the Top pf the Mountain: Pie Town, New Mexico and Neighbors. R. Coffin, 1990.
Mendenhall, Walter. Ground Waters of the Indio Region, California: With A Sketch of the Colorado Desert. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909.
Miller, Alma. Niland California 1914-1989: Gateway to the Valley. Yuma, AZ: Sun Graphics, 1989.
Myers, Joan. Where the Buffalo Roamed: Images of the New West. Italy: Damiani, 2019.
Odens, Peter. Drama in the Sun: Tales from the Imperial Valley. Calexico, CA: Calexico Chronicle, 1965.
Odens, Peter. Pioneerland: Below the Sea. Calexico, CA: Calexico Chronicle, 1970.
Pepper, Choral. Guidebook to the Colorado Desert of California. Los Angeles, CA: Ward Ritchie Press, 1972.
Perkins, Edna Brush. The White Heart of Mojave: An Adventure with the Outdoors of the Desert. New York, NY: Boni and Liveright, 1922.
Remeika, Paul. Geology of Anza-Borrego: Edge of Creation. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1992.
Romer, Margaret. A History of Calexico. Los Angeles, CA: Historical Society of Southern California, 1922.
Shindo, Charles J. Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Spilman, W.T. The Conspiracy: An Exposure of the Owens River Water and San Fernando Land Frauds. Los Angeles, CA: The Alembic Club, 1912.
Stange, Maren. Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in America, 1890-1950. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Stanton, Robert Brewster. Down the Colorado. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
Stanton, Robert Brewster. The Colorado River Survey. Salt Lake City, UT: Howe Brothers, 1987.
Stewart, George R. John Phoenix Esq., The Veritable Squibob: A Life of Captain George H. Derby. New York, NY: H. Holt and Company, 1937.
Sykes, Godfrey. A Westerly Trend: Being a Veracious Chronicle of More than Sixty Years of Joyous Wanderings, Mainly in Search of Space and Sunshine. Tucson, AZ: Arizona Pioneers Historical Society, 1944.
Sykes, Godfrey. The Colorado Delta. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1937.
Walker, Boyd W. The Ecology of the Salton Sea, California: In Relation to the Sportfishery. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Fish and Game, 1961.
Waters, Frank. Rivers of America: The Colorado. New York, NY: Rinehart & Co., 1946.
Weigle, Marta. Women of New Mexico: Depression Era Images. Santa Fe, NM: Ancient City Press, 1993.
Wood, Nancy. Heartland, New Mexico: Photographs from the Farm Security Administration, 1935-1943. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Woodward, Arthur. Feud on the Colorado. Los Angeles, CA: Westernlore Press, 1955.
Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of New Mexico. New Mexico: A Guide to the Colorful State. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1945.
Yates, Richard. The Lower Colorado River: A Bibliography. Yuma, AZ: Arizona Western College Press, 1974.