Borrego Springs and Bombay Beach

In the windswept Southern California desert, abundant art meets nature’s palette

written by James Sinks

Longer than a football field, a sea serpent dives into the desert sand, emerging on the other side of a road. Nearby, a giant scorpion and grasshopper tower over the scrub. Mammoths stand watch. And a pair of giant tortoises peek through underbrush.

The metalwork menagerie—there are some 130 separate creatures in all—welcomes visitors to the windswept landscape that surrounds the sleepy Southern California enclave of Borrego Springs, a place where art meets barrenness and beauty, day and night.

Welcome to Borrego Springs sign with palm trees and green grass, highlighting desert community, outdoor activities, and travel in Southern California. — The small desert town of Borrego Springs lies 90 miles northeast of San Diego. (photo: James Sinks)

In a bowl with mountains jutting on three sides, the community feels a bit like an oasis that time forgot, with low-slung resorts that beckon winter escapees yet with little of the campy glitz of Palm Springs or the beach bustle of San Diego, each a ninety-minute drive away. Winter temps average a comfortable 71 degrees, compared to 109 degrees in July.

Likely named after nearby springs where herders watered their sheep—borrego is Spanish for lamb—the unincorporated desert township is home to about 3,500 people, four public golf courses, no stoplights and a surprising creative scene.

Outside town, adventures and sweat await in every direction. Borrego Springs is completely surrounded by the massive Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, created in 1932 and California’s largest park at 916 square miles.

Named in honor of the eighteenth century Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza, the stark topography includes steep mountainsides, rugged badlands, occasional springs, dry lake-beds and boulder piles. There are more than 100 miles of hiking trails, twelve wilderness areas, campgrounds, bighorn sheep and, in years with winter rain, explosions of spring wildflowers.

Vivid wildflower bloom in Oregon desert with purple and yellow flowers against mountain backdrop during sunset. — Wildflowers at the sprawling Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. (photo: David H. Collier/Visit California)

Start at the state park visitor center on the west edge of town and grab maps, buy $10 day-use parking passes and peer into a pond with tiny, colorful desert pupfish, which can survive even when water temps climb past 100 degrees. If they could talk, they’d hound you to stay hydrated, as even winter jaunts in the desert tend to be toasty, with little shade.

A 2.8-mile round-trip hike takes you to the tree-filled Borrego Palm Canyon, which is just as advertised, with palm trees in a canyon. Longer trail options snake to petroglyphs, through a narrow slot canyon or upward to over-looks. Near mud-formed caves, a trailside Hollywood and Vine replica street sign stands in the middle of nowhere.

If you’d rather explore on wheels, the lightly traveled local roads are ideal for biking, or California Overland Desert Adventures books jeep tours. Off-trail vehicles are not allowed in the park boundaries, but if four-wheeler adrenaline is your thing, a popular 85,000-acre recreation complex called Ocotillo Wells awaits east of town.

Everywhere, reliably clear skies glisten with stars after sun-down. Borrego Springs was named an International Dark Sky Community in 2018.

In the middle of town is festively named Christmas Circle, a grassy roundabout and park that was named after a birth on Christmas Eve in 1775. Today it’s the center of a quaint retail and arts district, with restaurants, yoga, a whitewashed stucco Lutheran church and the headquarters of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association, where you can prowl a native botanical garden.

The nonprofit Borrego Art Institute’s campus features a showy Mid-century Modern-styled gallery—it’s one of four galleries in town—plus an all-hours outdoor “ArtPark,” with community gardens, open-air classrooms, artistic space and a café.

Visitors also learn how to raise landscaping plants, vegetables, herbs and orchard trees in the arid desert environment, said Kim Wyatt, gallery manager for the institute. A separate pottery center is open to the public from October through May.

The region also is a haven for photographers, and an annual photo contest is staged by the Anza-Borrego Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of the state park.

“Art is a bridge between people and place,” said foundation spokeswoman Jaime Purinton. “Images of wildflowers, wildlife, starry skies and sweeping landscapes tell the story of the park in ways that words alone cannot.”

At the local performing arts center, catch live shows and free Wednesday movie screenings, and a five-day film festival makes its annual run in January. Other pleasing attractions include a community concert series, plus the lack of big box stores and drive-thrus, said Françoise Rhodes, director of the Borrego Springs Chamber of Commerce and Welcome Center.

Inspired by both mythological and actual desert wildlife, the 130 local metal animals surrounding town were welded by celebrated Mexican-born metalsmith Ricardo Breceda, whose studio is about an hour away. A former boot salesman, he began creating sculptures when his daughter asked for a dinosaur.

In this part of the world, evocative desert art isn’t confined to Borrego Springs.

Thirty miles east is the Salton Sea, a landlocked lake accidentally created when an irrigation project from the Colorado River repeatedly flooded in the early 1900s. A onetime tourism hot spot and visited by the likes of Frank Sinatra and The Beach Boys, the now-dying lake is prone to algae blooms and toxic dust blowing along its receding shorelines, and the perimeter is dotted with ramshackle former resort towns. Yet amid the decay, there’s imagination.

At Salvation Mountain, fill your soul and astonish your eyes at a garishly painted, 150-foot-high monument built from cinder blocks, stucco and old tires. The place was created over a quarter century by a Korean War veteran who wanted everybody to know that God is love, and has since been named a heritage site.

Built with cinder blocks and old tires, Salvation Mountain is a veteran’s expression of love. (photo: Bigstock)

In the post-apocalyptic-feeling Salton Sea subdivision of Bombay Beach, at 223 dusty feet below sea level, discover galleries, abandoned buildings splashed with graffiti inside and out, old planes repurposed into sculptures and a former drive-in filled with derelict cars. Some seventy-five outdoor pieces can be found here, and several of them debuted at the annual Burning Man art festival in the Nevada desert.

A scenic Oregon desert town at sunset with illuminated trailers, art displays, and a stunning lake view in the background, highlighting the state's beautiful landscapes and creative lifestyle. — Bombay Beach is a kitschy relic at 223 feet below sea level. (photo: Kevin Key)

At the local Ski Inn, you’ll find nostalgia, good humor, a juke-box and the lowest-elevation establishment for burgers and drinks in the Western Hemisphere.

The local Bombay Beach Arts and Culture Center runs a tiny café on weekends and maintains a map of art locations. Among several art installations on the brackish water’s edge is a partially submerged swing set. Nearby, a stainless metalwork muses wistfully that “The Only Other Thing is Nothing.”

Like the region’s starkness and the creativity it inspires, there’s nothing quite like it.