The journey from Los Angeles to the mouth of the Colorado River, deep in Mexico, is not for the faint of heart. First comes the astonishing Imperial Valley, one of the planet's most improbable agricultural miracles—and ecological obscenities. Here, in a landscape that ought to be surrendering itself to the Sonoran Desert, stretch endless, geometrically perfect rows of alfalfa, lettuce, broccoli, carrots, and winter vegetables, a vast green industrial carpet laid across some of the hottest, driest terrain in North America. Enormous irrigation canals slice through the desert, delivering billions of gallons of Colorado River water to an agricultural empire that produces staggering quantities of food and cattle feed. The scale is breathtaking, the engineering ingenious, the environmental consequences appalling. You are witnessing nothing less than the wholesale rearrangement of nature, a colossal act of human will that conscripts a great American river into growing lettuce and alfalfa in a furnace. Then comes Calexico, that sprawling, sun-blasted American border town, and its Mexican twin, Mexicali, a booming metropolis of factories, traffic, commerce, and relentless urban expansion. Crossing the border feels like passing through a membrane between two different civilizations, both equally dependent on the same vanishing river. South of Mexicali, Mexico’s Federal Highway 5 carries you into an increasingly elemental landscape. The commercial frenzy gradually falls away, replaced by immense, empty expanses of desert, the jagged, magnificent Sierra de Juárez rising to the west, and mountains so stark and untrammeled they might have emerged yesterday from the furnace of creation. There’s something almost biblical about this country: its brutal light, its profound silences, its utter indifference to human ambition. The road seems to go on forever, threading through a wilderness of rock, sand, salt flats, and shimmering heat, where civilization feels less like a permanent achievement than a temporary interruption. A stop in a local town leaves me a bit wary. Am I in cartel country? Might I be abducted? Eventually, you turn toward the little fishing settlement of El Golfo de Santa Clara, perched at the northernmost reaches of the Gulf of California, where the mighty Colorado River once completed its nearly 1,500-mile journey from the snowfields of the Rocky Mountains to the sea. What a destination! What an outrageous geographical punch line! This was once the terminus of one of the great rivers of the American West, a sprawling, luxuriant delta of wetlands, lagoons, cottonwood forests, and astonishing biological abundance. The naturalist Aldo Leopold, who explored the delta in 1922, described a wilderness alive with birds, fish, and tangled greenery, an almost tropical paradise improbably flourishing at the edge of one of the world’s most forbidding deserts. Today, much of that abundance has vanished. The river that carved the Grand Canyon, nourished ancient civilizations, and sustained an entire desert ecosystem has been dammed, diverted, allocated, litigated, and consumed long before it can reach its ancient destination. And there, at the edge of the Gulf of California, comes the terrible revelation: the Colorado River, one of North America's most consequential waterways, no longer reaches the sea. Its immense historical volumes have been siphoned away to irrigate American agriculture, sustain sprawling Southwestern cities, and support a civilization seemingly incapable of recognizing the limits of its own appetites. The old delta remains, a haunting geography of tidal mudflats, salt marshes, and abandoned channels, but the great freshwater pulse that once animated it is largely gone, interrupted only by occasional floods and carefully orchestrated restoration releases. Standing there, with the desert behind you and the vast gulf stretching southward, you confront an extraordinary paradox. Hundreds of miles to the north, the Imperial Valley blooms in extravagant, industrial greenery. Here, where the river should be delivering its final magnificent gift to the sea, there is mostly absence. We have made the desert bloom by emptying a river. Then we congratulated ourselves on the miracle. Watch the Crotty take in the video above. Crotty Farm Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading Crotty Farm Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Crotty Farm Report at crotty.substack.com/subscribe
