58 



CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 



of the dam. Typical instances of how commercial enterprises have 

 benefited a natural resource and given pleasure and profit to thousands 

 of people, in a way their projectors never dreamed of, are to be found 

 in eastern Madera and Fresno counties. 



Before the San Joaquin Light and Power Company, taking advantage 

 of a natural site, impounded the flood waters of the Crane Valley 

 watershed, North Fork Creek in Madera C-ounty supported but a few 

 trout and apparently had no future as a popular trout stream. The 

 building of Crane Valley Dam made Bass Lake. This beautiful sheet 

 of water, some six miles long, a half-mile wide and a hundred feet 

 deep, is now teeming with both trout and black bass. A popular 



Fig. 22. Bass' Lake (Crane Valley Reservoir) in eastern Madera County. Power develop- 

 ment was responsible for the formation of this fine body of water. Photograph by A. D. 

 Ferguson. 



summer resort is upon its banks and hundreds of campers annually 

 visit its shores. 



Stevenson Creek in Fresno County, stocked in 1888 with black- 

 spotted trout, would never have furnished an incentive to visits by 

 anglers, had it not been for the construction of the "Shaver" Dam by 

 the Fresno Flume and Lumber Company. In an old-time biennial 

 report of the (then) Fish Commission, it was stated that a careful 

 survey showed that Stevenson Creek could never become a trout stream 

 of consequence. Now, and for many years past, Shaver Lake, formed 

 by the construction of a dam just above the point where Stevenson 

 Creek starts tumbling 4,000 feet in four miles down into the San 

 Joaquin River, is the mecca of thousands of people from the San 

 Joaquin Valley, who, in summer, camp upon its shores and enjoy the 

 good fishing to be had there. 



The latest instance of how a high and impassable dam can sometimes 

 prove of great benefit to the people's fishing interests is at Huntington 

 Lake in Fresno County. Big Creek, stocked with rainbow trout in 

 1897, soon became a good fishing stream to the few people who in that 

 day found its waters. In the then little known back country, its 



