CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 



59 



isolation was its protection. In the year 1911, came the Pacific Light 

 and Power Corporation, with thousands of workmen, to invade the 

 solitudes of Big Creek Basin. At the lower end of the basin, at the 

 head of the gorge through which Big Creek falls some 2,000 feet in a 

 trifle over a mile, the company built a huge concrete dam. At first 

 but 120 feet high, the dam is now being raised to a height of 150 feet. 

 It impounds 150,000 acre-feet of water, and to the stock of rainbow 

 trout already in the creek, the Fish and Game Commission has added 

 several hundred thousand Loch Leven, eastern brook and rainbow fry. 

 A mountain railway and a county wagon road permit an annual influx 

 of several thousand people from all over the state to the shores of 

 beautiful Huntington Lake. A fine hotel and many lesser ones are 

 already located there. The Forest Service and the county of Fresno 

 will jointly build a scenic road along the north shore of the lake during 



Fig. 23. Huntington Lake, Fresno County, elevation 7,000 feet. Photograph by A. D. 



Ferguson. 



the coming summer, and the playgrounds commission of the city of 

 Fresno has selected a site on the lake .shore where it is planned to give 

 annual outings to 5,000 children. 



Here, as elsewhere, the fishing is the chief lure which draws so many 

 people to the mountains, but there is little danger of the fish supply 

 becoming depleted; for not only will the lake support and harbor 

 vast numbers of trout, but each spring, from out its depths, will emerge 

 big, strong, spawning fish to ascend every tributary stream and the 

 process of natural reproduction will go on to replenish the annual 

 drain. 



Other notable examples of the incidental (or accidental) benefits 

 which may follow the building of high impounding dams across moun- 

 tain streams, are the Highland reservoir in Calaveras County, the dam 

 at Strawberry and the big dam at Relief, both of the latter being in 

 Tuolumne County. 



