On the morning of April 8, 2200, Lake Ballona went missing. A pair of hikers ventured down from the Hollywood Hills on a day excursion into the Tongva Wetlands. Where the area’s largest body of freshwater met seawater to create a brackish habitat, they discovered an empty crater. Lake Ballona was gone. Vanished overnight. Only muddy puddles remained where the lake had swelled the day before. There were no signs of violence.
How could an entire lake have disappeared so suddenly? The weather had been placid. No earthquake had occurred that might have caused a fissure in the lakebed. Ballona Creek, the lake’s freshwater source, remained flowing. This creek, which meandered east to west through the urban area into the liminal zone, was the pride of Los Angeles. Even though it was dammed at Culver Lake — the upstream urban sister of Lake Ballona — the creek always flowed. The waterway was fed by a network of solar-powered rain and marine layer capture systems that surpassed in efficacy and ingenuity even the finest Roman aqueducts.
A few overim... Read more
