The Eccentric Adventures of Captain Davis, Sea-Desert Dweller

Back when California's Salton Sea was really a sea, or at least a big lake after the last flooding in 1905, Captain Charles E. Davis made it his home. Davis had already been a fishing boat captain, a gold prospector, and a world explorer before he settled down to become one of California's more memorable eccentrics.

There, Davis developed and inhabited Mullet Island, on top of an inactive volcanic butte and among what Salton Sea historian Pat Laflin calls “an inferno of hissing geysers and boiling mud pots.” It was befitting of Davis’ character to live atop a dormant volcano, and that is said to have been one of the site’s major draws for him. The island was named for the alfalfa-fed mullet that Davis raised, which later became famous throughout California. It also became the site of Davis’ passion project, Hell’s Kitchen, a combination boat landing/restaurant/dancehall where boaters and fishers often stopped for good food and a good time. Davis built it alone, along with his own cabin.

In the 1920s, Hell’s Kitchen’s heyday, motorcyclists and adventurers frequently wrote about Hell’s Kitchen’s oddball charms. Describing Mullet Island as “the headquarters of the Salton Sea fishing industry,” one 1922 periodical noted that Hell’s Kitchen was so named because it was “on top of a volcano and may blow off into space any minute.” (The same could be said, perhaps, of Davis.)

Davis provided both food and entertainment to those who visited his island. He also developed a slew of side projects that rarely succeeded: fish farming, painting, historical investigation, and various tourist draws. Read about the unique Captain Davis at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Coachella Valley Historical Society)


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