The desert community lies on the north shore of the Salton Sea in the Eastern Coachella Valley and is surrounded by agricultural land.

Land developers intending to irrigate the desert with water from the Colorado River did not foresee excess snow melt, and for two years from 1905 to 1906 accidentally re-routed the entirety of the river to the Salton Sink, flooding the salt mines that had been a source of salt for perhaps centuries and giving rise to the Salton Sea.

Groundwater and water transported via the Coachella Canal have transformed the desert environment into large swaths of agricultural land.

The county agreed to construct the Farmworker Service Center as part of a multimillion-dollar settlement agreement entered into to avoid further litigation.

Following the construction of the Farmworker Service Center, the county committed to other investments including the Mecca-North Shore Community Library and the Mecca Fire Station, both inaugurated in 2011.

In 2011, residents' complaints of offending smells resembling rotten eggs, human waste, raw sewage, burnt motor oil, and petroleum traced back to sulfur compounds from the soy whey pond operated by Waste Reduction Technologies (WRT).

[13] Mecca was a featured location in Roger Corman's 1966 film The Wild Angels, starring Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra and Bruce Dern.

Mecca was also the setting for the 1990 neo-noir film After Dark, My Sweet, directed by James Foley and starring Jason Patric, Bruce Dern, and Rachel Ward.

Legend of Juan de Iturbe's Lost Pearl Ship in the Desert is a local legend that after the 1862 Great flood locals reported seeing an ancient Spanish galleon that had beached during a voyage at New Spain's northernmost frontier of water the ancient Lake Cahuilla in 1615.

Spanish missionaries from the San Gabriel Mission in Los Angeles would make the long journey to collect salt from brine pools near the northern Salton sink (South of Mecca) known as the evaporating ancient Lake Cahuilla in 1810.

In 1823 under orders from the Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide to reopen a land route (closed by an Indian Revolt In 1871) from Alta California to Sonora, Captain José Romero and José María Estudillo documented the first recorded expedition into the Coachella Valley.

They traversed the Halchidoma Trail and were escorted by the Cahuilla to Dos Palmas Spring(Near Mecca) reaching it on December 31, 1823.

From 1905 to February 1907, the Colorado River overflowed into the Salton Sink which had an ancient history of previous lake iterations.

1.4% of residents hold a college degree, with 17.7% continuing education after high school, ranking Mecca as the 17th least-educated city in the United States.