Was Sandy Shores Always Abandoned? 

GTA Blaine County Stories would’ve been a great DLC idea

Wait, Sandy Shore is inspired to Bombay Beach, on the side of Salton lake/sea, it was a tourist village in the 50s, in decline due to agriculture, the use of pesticides and fertilizers polluted the waters, causing the death of fish (therefore an industry) and tourism due to chemical and putrefying odors

I'm surprised that there isn't a mod to bring Sandy back to its glory days it would be nice to see the town as it was in its heyday

I’m making a real world history video on Sandy shores good watch bro

Trevor Philips is the most notorious resident of Sandy Shores. It's a fitting town for a creepy guy like him to live. Sandy Shores is the kind of place you should NEVER visit alone. You could easily disappear never to be seen again.

This hits different at 2 am, hell yeah

Another reason why I love GTA V. Rockstar really decided to add such details to an abandoned town. And it really does feel like you're really going through some kinda ghost town

It is likely related to the Alamo Sea, the large lake near Sandy Shores which is inspired by the Salton Sea in California. The Salton Sea was once a popular resort area in the 1950s, but on years later became polluted from agricultural runoff, (In Sandy Shores' case probably from farms in Grapeseed) resulting in a foul smell and dead fish on the shores. The surrounding communities beaching the Salton Sea obviously didn't fare well after with heavy reliance on tourism, and the once-popular resort towns declined like we see with Sandy Shores. And in GTA's case, also Blaine County's growing illegal drug distribution and human trafficking from the altruists. Damn Blaine County be really depressing if you think about it.

Pretty nice overview of Sandy Shores. Yeah, you can tell once was a prosperous "beach" town, with a large marina, a rather wide motel with a big swimming pool and all and all the oasis charm that you could find in the 50's. And yeah, it's definitely gone. There's no other industry it could be supported other than just local tourism and somehow it faded to the point of becoming a near ghost town.

My grandparents grew up here before they moved to Liberty City. I’m going to Los Santos next week and this is definitely in my list

Sandy Shores always looked like it survived Hurricane Sandy… pun intended

Tbh sandy shores was always one of my fav places to go. Especially when you have a small group to RP with

Sandy Shores is based off of the various real life towns around the Salton Sea, such as Salton City, Bombay Beach, and Desert Shores. The sea had been created by accident, and people thought it was going to be the next up-and-coming beach destination, so development boomed from the 50s to the 70s. The towns began to decline, however, when the sea became filled with chemicals and its salinity ended up becoming too high to support wildlife. Nowadays, the once booming towns are either rundown or pretty much ghost towns. The name Sandy Shores is probably directly inspired by Desert Shores.

I like the enthusiasm of the video, but it's genuinely odd that you ignored how the game itself blatantly and consistently states that Sandy Shores has become so desolate because of pollution in the Alamo Sea; which made the beach the city relied on to generate tourism unsafe. This is the dominant reason the city is so abandoned and neglected.

I kind of wish less AI traffic drove around in Sandy Shores. I feel like it would really add to that derelict feel of the whole place.

I feel bad for everyone who lives in Sandy Shores.

I lived in a town in California just like this back in 2010 called Yermo. It, too, used to be a popular tourist spot back in the 50's and 60's before a major highway was build outside of town that completely bypassed it, leaving the local economy to tank and causing people to flee. I don't know what the peak population was but when I was there, it was about 1700. It was so run-down that they had to merge their school district with another one in either Barstow or Victorville to ensure they were noticed by the State and got funding and such. Much like Sandy Shores, there are only a handful of small businesses keeping the whole town afloat, but if your aspirations involve more than working at a gas station or a failing diner the rest of your life, you're kinda forced to move out of town eventually. We left just two years later in 2012 when it became clear that you can't raise a 5-kid family off of small town bucks. Sometimes I miss that place cause the sense of community was strong, everybody really knew everybody and honestly outside of the bullying the 2 schools weren't that bad there, but I can look back on it 14+ years later and realize that if I had stayed there, I would have NO opportunity in life. Just like everyone else who stayed there.

Watching this video made me wish GTA was more about these little decaying isolated rural communities and the people that inhabit them. But then again it wouldn't be GTA anymore, but more like a roleplaying game in the vein of Skyrim, just set in a realistic world. At the very least exploring those aspects through longer and more detailed secondary missions different from the action packed chaos of regular GTA and its main storyilne, would be a compromise I'd go for.

Jock Cranley the former stunt man used to live in sandy shore before he killed his wife

Dude you should do this with other towns, maybe you can do gta 4's firefly pier or that actual ghost town in the middle of the Las Venturas Desert.

I can see why no one ever goes back there cause there's literally nothing to do in Sandy shores in gta online

For some reason I have a love hate relationship with sandy shores, everytime i have to resupply for my nightclub most of the supplies end up in that area, which i think can get tedious without a helicopter but in terms of just observing it, it's one of my favorite areas in the game, its small, it has an airstrip, my mc businesses are all next to each other and i often offroad alot in my free time.

The video i didn’t know i needed but did actually need

I never looked at sandy shores this way, mostly saw it as a rural town without much history. This is a great video.

It's actually not too far off to what's been happening to real life small towns located throughout the U.S. for the past decades unfortunately. As the country becomes more and more urban, small towns will keep declining

see, how many people even thought about any of this during one of their, possibly multiple playthroughs of the game? Yet rockstar went out of their way to put all the signs in there

this felt very immersive like as if this was an in-game documentary, other than the one line at 5:22 calling chiliad the tallest mountain in the game. great video overall!

Love the research and logical explanation of the decline and the reason for the current appearance of the area 😮

Makes me realize how detailed GTA V is.. awesome work by Rockstar. Great video too mate

I can tell you for a fact that it's about a 2-minute jog from boilerplate prison to sandy shores, ain't nobody freezing at night.

I haven't played gta 5 for a few months now. But i still enjoyed the video as someone who is too into what small towns were over 50 years ago, while having little interest in what they are now.

I always dreamed of being able rebuilding sandy shores by giving them money or resources

Awesome video!! Yes I'd love to see more of this as well. The choice of the background music was a good touch though I know you've used this music in past videos as well.

Bro , I love content like this on these older games , it adds so much more mystery and interest in the game . Great video

It's funny, but as a GTA player, I find myself spending most of my time in Sandy Shores. There's something about that place that I really like - maybe it's the desolate atmosphere and the fact that it's so far removed from the bustling city. Whenever I go there, it feels like a perfect escape from the daily city life.

it would be cool if rockstar put this video in one of the gta 6 tv shows like a history channel 😂

Og falls music. Amazing for sleep

I often wondered over the years how sandy shores looked back in its heyday. Great video

Sandy shores is the best bit off Gta for driving about

That's something I've actually never thought about. Good video.

I feel like the Sandy Shores area is somewhat based off of Owens Valley in California. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Owens Valley was a center of agriculture with numerous farms and rural towns. But in 1913 the Los Angeles Aqueduct was built which diverted water from the Owens Valley river to flow south west toward Los Angeles. So much water was being diverted that Owens Valley was getting very hot and dry due to the lack of water. By 1920 Owens Valley was so unsustainable that all of the farms (and most of the townships) had been completely abandoned.

please do more of this

Great job on video. Real documentary style narration and soundtrack.

My favorite area in any game; the arid and peaceful desert.

this was so well done I almost forgot this place doesn't exist

The style of your reports is just so refreshing and so well done, you are fascinated by the narrative and it's like an exciting film. Can I have some more, please! I'm a real fan of your clips... they're real DOPE!!!

U are like the Digital Car Archive when he launches a gta car story

Great video as always!

Nice video even though it was short I really enjoyed your format and thoughts on it

Every once in a while I actually drive to sandy shores and just chill or maybe drive around in a 4x4 truck

I expected a video about the reason why online players avoid the desert, then I got hit with a Sandy Shores lore. Perfect

I like to think that Sandy Shores at one point could have looked like a traditional rural American town with brick and wooden buildings and a Main Street with shops, diners, tire shops and a gas station, before the town fell into dispair, becoming a hotspot for gang and criminal activity. There could have been buildings similar to Blackwater from RDR2 and RDR1, vintage cars parked on road sides, people stopping by on road trips, maybe even looking somewhat like 1955 Hill Valley from Back to the Future, but on a smaller scale.

I really enjoyed this vid!

Sandy Shores was so funny to me and my family because it was basically just the town we came from but in Montana.

Great place to go if you don’t want to suffer from the wrath of a flying bike

Nice video! Maybe do something like this about Paleto Bay or the Chilliad Mountain State Wilderness? I sometimes used to just park my car at a random spot and hiked through the forests in gta 5, after the Bank heist where you go through the forest with a bike and flee on a dinghy the wilderness in gta 5 really got my intention. Earned a like!

I initally read the video title as shady sands instead of sandy shores lmao, i think the fallout rabbit hole is getting to me a bit lol

love your videos about my favorite game!

I've been playing GTA5 for so long and as a current RP player and have never thought if the history nor have I ever seen a video quite like this. I think this is awesome and gives a lot of insight into why Sandy is the way it is!

My first thought was the NCR and its capital from fallout tv show

The more I learn about hidden gems of GTA 5, the more I’m playing it and mentioning it. When I play the game, I explore and do things more in Los Santos, Chumash, North Chumash, The Zancudos, Paleto Bay, Mount Chiliad, etc. But Sandy Shores isn’t really the place I explore much, unless I am playing missions. I do sometimes pass through that little town. Especially because Trevor Phillips lives there. I’m really not into fictional things but when fictional things happen to characterize nonfictional things, then that’s when I get interested. That’s why I’m interested in learning about the hidden histories of GTA 5. The city of Los Santos is based on Los Angeles, and the desert towns are based on the real desert towns. Plus we cannot forget about North Yankton, and it’s town of Ludendorff. Which is based on the town of Bismarck. Anyways, Sandy Shores is pretty rugged. So rugged and bummed, that the first thing that reigns supreme over that town is that cell tower. Wonder what the hell the people would live with without that tower. 😂

I live within 2-3 hours of about 15 towns just like Sand Shores. This was a great video.

Thank you for the effort put into this. God bless.

I always end up at sandy shores when i play gta and i truly explore and run around when playing and i like to jus drive around with reblel radio on the radio and enjoy the peaceful atmosphere

something a lot of people dont really mention is that i personally think that the recession had a great deal of influence on how the map, particularly the rural areas ended up looking

Ngl sandy is my favorite place to be

This was a great watch, the music makes it feel very melodramatic

leonida will have something similar with the rich and poor neighborhoods even abandoned areas.

You should do short docs like this on the different neighborhoods within los santos. I’ve played for hundreds of hours but when I decide to travel by foot I’m always noticing details I have never seen before. Each neighborhood has its own culture, cars, gangs and real world counterpart.

Awesome video.. give us more lore 💙

I enjoyed that, goof job 👍

Great video !!!!!🎉

its also the only place the caddy spawn on the road, which explains the non-car based structure sandy shores had

Good video 👍🏼

can you do videos like this for GTA SA too? like in Northstar Rock there's an abandoned creepy cabin in there with a floor filled with bloodstains

More of this kind of content would be great

I was always feeling uncomfortable when i driven through Sandy Shores, this village is so poor! It's such a giant contrast from Los Santos! Also, it would be so cool if Rockstar released a update of Sandy Shores before GTA 6, where Sandy Shores will get rebuilt and starts looking nice again! It will be a great way to add some variety to the game!

Interesting reporting skills son

Salton Sea vibes

I remember playing GTA V offline on PS3 in 2016 and frequently visit Sandy Shores at night, especially the motel back when it was riddled with clowns. I think it was the old version of GTA V

I assume the developers modeled to towns after Shelton Sea area like Mecca California and other towns in that area. In real life that area lost population becasue of the salinity of the water in Shelton Sea but the game did not capitalize on this for some reason. Another area might be around Mount Shasta like Weed, all 3 towns with named Shasta, Dunsmuir, Redding, Shingletown, these are all overall nice places in real life so not sure about that. Another area in CA is the foothills that does have some areas that were very crappy back in 2008 but still a bit crappy today like Mariposa CA, Coulterville CA and so on, there are many dozens of these towns in the foothills some are nice some a bit crappy.

4:13 *Trevor Phillips Industries

We need vidoes like this.

Sandy shores has this cozy vibe to it I dunno why

0:32 i heard this entire sentence in tuco’s voice 😂

I lived in a little town that felt so much like that. Aguila, AZ.

If you think of it the prison zandcodo and humane labs make a triangle

I love this👍🏼

This was fantastic

What sucks is that sandy shores seems like such a small and charming town and it sucks that it’s condition is that bad. But at least there is paleto bay.

😢 that Rockstar and the players mostly forgot about Sandy shores when it comes to online and story content or in general just forgetting. I mean most missions and properties all exist within the city when it comes to navigating the map whether your veteran or a noob, because most players already know where most spawn locations are when it comes to getting the job or mission done quickly. Even myself I'm deciding to move all my biker properties to the city for less of a travel when selling or sourcing for convenience when traveling to my other businesses that are in the city. This is also a great story.

San andreas did a better job on interiors and different items to buy. Just look at the different clothes stores or the different casinos. The car modification shops. One was a lowrider shop, and another was a regular shop. The last one was a sports shop. Different haircut and tattoo shops. It gave players the reason to explore the entire map.

Sandy shores also was grapeseed

Not to discredit anything you said in the video but are u aware of the location that sandy shores is based off of? I pretty sure it's history would better reflect that of where it was based off of bc it's so closely identical to its real life model (the salten sea) which is in real life some what geographically correct in location to LA (over the hills in the dessert) it was abandon due to the sea water becoming polluted and other factors

If I would have to choose where to live in the gta v map I would live in paleto bay. Its a nice quiet town right next to the huge mount chilliad where I would definetly go on hikes, and I mean its got pretty much all you need like 24 stores, barber shop, clothing shop, ammunation, yeah I think paleto would be the best place to live. Away from polluted los santos with bad traffic.

Los Santos = La county Sandy shores = San Bernardino county

Pleae make a video on lore of gta v iconic buildings...... Military base, Prison, Noose building, humane labs, powerplant, etc

There are alot of buildings in the Alamo Sea, so they probably had some flooding or major storms that destroyed the town

I would lıke to see new ımprovements around Sandy Shores in the next updates.

You forgot about The 8 killer, which lived in Sandy Shores (burned house with clues). He may be a reason for Sandy's downfall