Anza-Borrego South: Railroad Bend

Photo of the big bend in the railroad tracks, over a sand dune, in Imperial County outside of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
The Bend in the Railroad

If would seem a simple matter. If you wanted to build a railroad, and it had to go from Ocotillo to Dos Cabezas, you would lay the tracks directly from one place to the other, over the shortest distance. But there is a difference in elevation between the two places, and so the railroad builders put a large bend in the railroad to make the change more gradual than a direct route.

The bend is in an area that hurricanes Kathleen and Doreen ravaged in 1976 and 1977. You can still see some of the wreckage to tracks and drainpipes. The many smoke trees in the wash were probably started when floodwaters germinated their seeds.

Photo of a drain pipe that would have carried rainwater in a wash under the tracks of the San Diego-Arizona Railroad until it was made unusuable by the hurricane-caused floods of the 1970s
Drain-pipe Wreckage