Nature had dug two deep, 40-mile-long ditches for the Imperial Valley. They carried to the Salton Sea four times the sediment excavated for the Panama Canal. And the Colorado River flowed unchecked.
July 10, 2003
History
Colorado Goes Beserk
Creation of the Salton Sea
The banks of the cut began to cave in. On August 9,the entire Colorado made a right turn at the Mexican cut, powered through the breach, gushed down the Alamo canal into the valley, and created the Salton Sea.
July 3, 2003
San Diego's five worst floods
The skies turned oceanic, or seemed that way. Dams and reservoirs filled beyond capacity and burst. Flash floods barraged every canyon and arroyo. They carried off barns and houses, some rolling head over heels on the rapids.
June 26, 2003
San Diego veterans of World War II's Bataan Death March sue Mitsui, Mitsubishi
"I live a perfect life,” Lester Tenney told me. “I’ve been a very fortunate man.” We were sitting in the sunshine on his patio on Mount Soledad. Betty, his wife of over 40 years, had …
March 13, 2003
The True Marchers
By poring over the account book and analyzing the entries in it, Crosby eventually deduced the identities of all 36 of the soldiers in the first and second expeditions. (Previously, only 8 had been conclusively identified.)
October 31, 2002
Our Saintly Namesake
Diego turned the convent into a hospital. During the plague, he was”caught kissing the sores of those affected with a contagious disease, he replied that it was the best way to treat this kind of illness.”
August 8, 2002
San Diego remembers the deluge
Travelers from San Diego to Los Angeles had to drive west around Mt. Soledad, through Pacific Beach and La Jolla. On December 13, 1930, the Rose Canyon Highway opened: a five-mile shortcut on the east slope of Soledad.
August 1, 2002
Life Along the San Diego River
“There were two different swimming holes. The girls would have one and the boys would sneak up there, and the girls would be swimming nude and we would try to swipe their clothes.
July 25, 2002
Return of the Native
In memory, I, a toddler, am seated on old George Marston’s lap. On another evening, Laurence Klauber tells me all about snakes, while in a corner, Colonel Fletcher booms on about the virtues of real estate.
November 21, 2001
Immigrant secrets
Ah Quin pawned some jewelry. When he suffered general financial instability toward the end of his life, he also had to sell some of the dozen businesses in San Diego in which he was involved.
November 1, 2001
Cortés Looks for Amazons
“Nearly a decade before Jiminez discovered Baja California, Cortés had heard accounts of an island rich in pearls and gold and, ‘inhabited only by women without any men.’ Jiminez, then, may have known what to look for.”
September 13, 2001