Qualla: Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea

Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea: Introduction

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Navy built an airstrip at the Salton Sea in 1942 because the flat, isolated desert provided exactly the kind of training environment that preparing pilots for combat required: no obstacles, no witnesses, no weather surprises. The station served as an auxiliary to Naval Air Station San Diego and housed more than 600 men. When the war ended, it was disestablished. The Salton Sea had other plans for the runway.

Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea: Wartime Operations

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Commissioned in 1942, the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea operated through World War II as a training facility subordinate to NAS San Diego. The barracks accommodated more than 600 men, and the station's remote location — deep in the Colorado Desert, far from populated are...

Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea: After the Navy: Space Program and Salt

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Naval Air Facility at El Centro, about 27 miles away, used land near the former station for space program parachute testing until 1979 — taking advantage of the same open desert that had made the original station useful. By the time that program ended, the Salton Sea had begu...

Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea: What the Sea Took Back

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Salton Sea's gradual encroachment over the old runway is a compressed version of the larger story of the sea itself: a body of water that exists only because of irrigation drainage, that has no predictable stable level, and whose shores have been host to a succession of uses ...