It is a desert of water in a desert of salt and mud and rock, one of the most desolate and desolately beautiful of regions. Its sunsets, seen across water that reflects like polished metal, are incredible. Its colors are of a staring, chemical purity. The senses are rubbed raw by its moonlike horizons, its mirages, its parching air, its moody and changeful atmosphere.

Wallace Stegner, "Dead Heart of the West" in American Places, 1981