Salinas Grandes, salt desert, c.3,200 sq mi (8,290 sq km), in Córdoba and Santiago del Estero provs., N Argentina. The Córdoba-Tucumán RR crosses the desert. Sodium and potassium are mined the...

Salinas, river, c.150 mi (240 km) long, rising in the Santa Lucia Mts., S Calif., and flowing (partly underground) past King City, Paso Robles, and Salinas, NW to Monterey Bay. The irrigated v...

Salinas, city (1990 pop. 108,777), seat of Monterey co., W Calif.; inc. 1874. It is the shipping and processing center of a fertile valley famous for its grain and lettuce. Fruits, vegetables,...

Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 1948–, president of Mexico (1988–94). A Harvard-educated political economist, he became minister of planning and the budget (1982–87) and succeeded Miguel de la Mad...

Kansas State University, main campus at Manhattan; coeducational; land-grant and state supported; chartered and opened 1863. There is an additional campus at Salina. Among the university's res...

Atascadero, uninc. town (1990 pop. 23,138), San Luis Obispo co., SW Calif., on the Salinas River; founded 1913 as a model community. It is a residential and farming town, with cattle, grain, f...

Steinbeck, John, 1902–68, American writer, b. Salinas, Calif., studied at Stanford. He is probably best remembered for his strong sociological novel The Grapes of Wrath, considered one of the ...

Tehuantepec, Isthmus of, c.125 mi (200 km) wide at its narrowest, S Mexico, between the Gulf of Campeche and the Gulf of Tehuantepec. It is mostly a rolling, tropical lowland with the lowest p...

Colosio Murrieta, Luis Donaldo, 1948–94, Mexican politician and government official, b. Magdalena del Kino, Mex. He studied at the Univ. of Pennsylvania and in Austria, returning to Mexico, wh...

De la Madrid Hurtado, Miguel, 1934–, Mexican public official, president of Mexico (1982–88). As minister of planning and budget in the cabinet of José López Portillo, he was influential in pla...