It was supposed to irrigate farmland — not flood a desert ... in California history: the creation of the Salton Sea. What started as an engineering solution turned into an environmental anomaly ...

One sign read, "If you can read this you're in range of the anomaly," while the other ... burger and a 1980s police car are in the California desert and that we're probably not all hallucinating.

SAN FRANCISCO— A judge has rejected federal agencies’ approval of activities in the California Desert Conservation Area, including a vast network of off-road vehicle routes in the West Mojave Desert.