The rich, silty soil of the area was found to be suitable for agriculture, but wells tapping groundwater brought up an inadequate supply of water for such a hot, arid region.
The California Development Company took over the project of diverting Colorado River water into the Coachella and Imperial Valleys in the Salton Sink, a dry lake bed which today contains the Salton Sea, hoping to turn the desert green with agricultural fields.
It received water from the Colorado River, which, by the time it had flowed to the Imperial Valley, contained massive amounts of silt.
Ultimately, this "financial assistance" resulted in the Southern Pacific Company obtaining a legal judgment against the California Development Company entered in the Superior Court of California in and for the County of Los Angeles on December 30, 1909, in the amount of $1,279,865.77, an enormous sum at the time equivalent to $43.4 million today.
The costs of the broken structure, as well as from lawsuits over the disaster, made the California Development Company a lost cause.