Yeah - It’s splitting like the narrow Seas around the Great Rift valley now in Ethiopia and the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea : The Salton Sea area is below sea level. It “should be” naturally flooded by the Colorado River if dams and dikes had not been built - and then repaired several times! - between the 1870’s and the final Hoover Dam improvements and canals in the 1930’s.
Baja California is a long, narrow split-off piece of land moving north-northwest towards San Francisco that is divided from the rest of Mexico by these fault lines through the Salton Sea and Imperial Valley.
Yep. There is another major influence right there also. San Gorgonio Pass just north of there happens to be the eastern end of a major 90 degree sea fault across the pacific plate that reaches way out past Hawaii. So that particular spot is the top eastern corner tip of a huge mass of movement. It is not creating any resistance at all and at the mercy of this huge influence.