Salton City is a census-designated place (CDP) in Imperial County, California, United States. The population was 978 at the 2000 census. It is part of the 'El Centro, California Metropolitan Statistical Area'. Although maps at first glance show Salton City to be a sizable community, in fact very few of the surveyed streets and roads were ever developed. The town was developed in the 1950s as a resort community on the Salton Sea, a saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, but as the salinity of the already highly polluted Sea rose, very little development took place and much of what was built — including the city's marina — was abandoned.