“Salton Sea Story” is a pamphlet published by Helen Burns in 1952. Helen Burns first made her home in Salton Sea Beach in the 1940s, long before anyone cared or dared to treat the area as a tourist attraction or vacation spot. She continued to operate various forms of hospitality until she passed away in 1994. She revised ‘Salton Sea Story’ many times after its initial edition in the early 50s.
This pamphlet is very hard to find, I located a copy of the 1963 edition at the Palm Springs Library in their reference section where I photographed each page to create a PDF. I later found a copy of my own (first edition) which I scanned properly.
I created this site originally to share a scan of the pamphlet, but I have since expanded it to include notes on my years of investigations of Imperial County in general and the mountains of ephemera I have collected.
“Queen of the Salton Sea” written by Donna Burns Kennedy (Helen’s daughter) is mandatory reading!