Written by PFA President Mark James Miller

A group of people are gathered around a mud puddle on the path that leads to the shore of Soda Lake. What could be so interesting? A moment later the answer reveals itself.

This mud puddle is teeming with life. Within are hundreds of tiny creatures, so small you have to bend down to get a good look at them as they wiggle about frantically, as if trying to escape their watery prison.

These are brine shrimp, known scientifically as Artemia salina, miniature crustaceans that thrive in the highly saline and alkaline environment of Soda Lake. Their life span is short — only a few months — but if they live long enough they can leave cysts behind, dormant eggs that can remain viable for years if conditions are right, then hatch after a rainy season and start the cycle of life once more.

Soda Lake shimmers vivid white around the edges where the water has receded, gradually becoming a soft and then a deeper blue toward the center of its 3,000 acres.

Formed during the Pleistocene Era, perhaps 100,000 years ago, and created as the result of tectonic activity along the San Andreas Fault, it was once, during the last Ice Age, much deeper and more permanent than what we see today.

Surrounded by the vastness of Carrizo’s 250,00 acres, it gives the visitor a sense of what this part of California must have been like before the Europeans came two and one half centuries ago.

Soda Lake is part of an endorheic basin — its water comes only from whatever the clouds decide to give it. It is one of the largest natural alkali wetlands in Southern California, and besides being a breeding ground for the tiny brine shrimp, it also is an important habitat for migratory and nesting birds like the sandhill crane.

The San Joaquin kit fox, the blunt–nosed leopard lizard, and the giant kangaroo rat all make the immediate area around the lake their home.

Spanish explorers like Father Juan Crespi and Captain Pedro Fages, who were trekking around the area on behalf of King Carlos III, were probably the first Europeans to see Soda Lake and the Carrizo Plain in the 1770s. But they were far from the first human beings to see the lake and its surroundings.

Archaeological evidence indicates human habitation in the area dates back as long as 13,000 years. Indigenous people like the Chumash, the Salinan, and the Yokuts certainly passed through the Carrizo from their homes on the coast and saw the lake as well as the vast and peaceful grassland, home of everything from the Pronghorn antelope, the cougar, and the horned lark to the monarch butterfly and the prairie falcon.

They left their mark on the famous Painted Rock, which contains pictographs of animals and humans that date back at least 3,000 years.

Getting there couldn’t be easier: Get on Highway 58 in Santa Margarita and go east. The winding road takes you through lovely green hills decorated with cactus, picturesque rock formations and trees.

Approximately 40 miles later you’ll find Soda Lake Road. In the distance there are the remains of a mining operation, equipment left to decay, silos with rusted roofs. Further on lies the Tremblor Range, mountains spewed out of the earth in an upheaval 20 million years ago.

The mud puddle I saw is probably dried up by now, and the water in the lake has no doubt receded even further toward the middle. The salt flats will be even more vivid as the spring and summer approach, and the lake will be waiting for the next rain to replenish it, just as it has for 100,000 years.