Death Valley, California: here in a harsh, hot and deadly terrain it appears mysterious natural forces are at work. It appeared rocks were moving around totally independently on perfectly flat ground. This strange and seemingly impossible phenomenon has defied explanation for more than sixty years. Weird or What? s1e1: Strange Survival, Discovery 2010
Death Valley: There is no doubt that the stones do move; that the stones move distances in one movement apparently upward of two and three-hundred feet. We’re talking about stones from the size of your little finger on up to large stones of six, seven hundred pounds ... Wind on a sloppy pliant surface is the only explanation we can come up with that’s legitimate. No-one has actually been out here and seen a stone move. Dwight Carey, geologist
California is one of the richest states in the USA. However, it’s hard to believe what’s happening in this northern suburb of Los Angeles every week. In this parking lot three thousand cars are waiting in line for food to be handed out. Millions of Americans have lost their job as a result of the health crisis and are struggling to make ends meet. USA on the Brink, Youtube 51.54, 2021
Salton Sea, California: Smell that: dead fish … The environmental disaster that this place is … Today the Sea is best known for the decaying resorts that litter the shore line. But just a few decades ago it was booming. Abandoned: California’s Disappearing Lakes, Vice TV 2023
The Sea was becoming saltier and more polluted, and by the late ’70s started to smell. ibid.
Now the Sea is shrinking. And toxic dust storms are the latest plague … There’s a billion dead fish everywhere. ibid.
The largest lake in California is an accident. The Mistake Lake. ibid.
Owen’s Lake: A battleground for the water wars between farmers and the city of Los Angeles a century ago. Los Angeles won … By 1924 this entire lake was dry. ibid.
Mojave desert: ‘A lot of us have been out here for multiple years. Kind of gotten used to it. The summers out here are brutal and the winters are unforgiving.’ Living Homeless in the Desert, Youtube short 15.18, Vice TV 2022
About 40 miles north of Los Angeles is the town of Lancaster … You see encampments in pretty much every direction … Hundreds of people without homes living in this part of the Mojave desert. ibid.
More than half of all unsheltered people in the US live in California. ibid.