“The buttes are 120 miles, 140 if you drive it, from Imperial Beach. Not in the same neighborhood at all. (roughly the same distance, though in a different direction, that Los Angeles would be.)”
The Salton Buttes are a group of five small lava domes in the lower Coachella Valley, in Imperial County, California. The Salton Buttes domes are on the southeast shoreline of the Salton Sea and are associated with the Salton Sea geothermal field within the Salton Trough (Salton Sink).[1] They are on the north margin of the Brawley seismic zone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Buttes