Volume 3 - Issue 14 | November 2022
What Does Your Past Look Like, Crowley Lake, and What Kind of Future Awaits You?
by Allison Weber
“About 700,000 years ago, massive volcanic eruptions flattened a volcano and sent hot ash and debris pouring down to the Owens Valley. In more recent times the area was a vast meadowland, until 1941 when the City of Los Angeles built the Long Valley Dam and created Crowley Lake”
This is the grand total of information under the section on Mono County's Crowley Lake page titled “History of Crowley Lake.” While this may be the short of the long, it is just that- short! The distance between 700,000 years ago and 81 years ago (1941) is vast, so what was this land between the origin of the Long Valley Caldera, for which Long Valley gets its name, and the modern recreation area we know today?
Volcanic Origins and Legacy
During a gigantic eruption about 760,000 years ago, an area about 12 miles wide and 18 miles long, bordered by what is now Mammoth Mountain, the Glass Mountains and Crowley Lake, collapsed to form the Long Valley Caldera. The eruption produced the Bishop Tuff, a pinkish-red rock that can be seen along US 395 on the Sherwin Grade, with ash from the eruption found as far east as Nebraska. Volcanic activity continued, with other volcanoes erupting along the rim of the Caldera, including, around 50,000 years ago, what we now know as Mammoth Mountain. Eruptions have continued in the Long Valley Caldera until as recently as 500-800 years ago in areas now known as Obsidian Dome, South Deadman Dome, and Panum Crater. The bottom of the Mono Lake was pushed up above the lake surface by an injection of magma to form Paoha (the white) Island approximately 300 years ago.
More recently, we see the area’s continued volcanic activity in the form of Mammoth Mountain’s fumarole, a vent expelling carbon dioxide fumes from magma beneath the earth's surface, and geothermal springs. Perhaps Long Valley's most photographed location, the scenic Hot Creek Geological Site features boiling water, fumaroles, and occasional geyser eruptions as a result of magma 3 miles beneath the earth.
Left Hot Creek steams in the cool morning air at sunrise. Photo courtesy Kevin Lee (@justfleeting)
Unlike Hot Creek, where entering the water is not allowed due to the possibility of water temperatures rapidly changing and becoming dangerously hot, there are a number of hot springs in Long Valley that are enjoyed all year round by residents and tourists alike.
Right Wild Willy's Hot Spring, popular with tourists, boasts 254 google reviews, 1,000 Instagram posts under #wildwillyshotsprings, and 15,700 Instagram posts tagged with its location. Photo courtesy Kevin Lee (@justfleeting)
"The People": The Original Inhabitants of Long Valley
The abundance of flowing water from snowmelt, as well as from geothermal springs, has historically drawn both people and animals to the lush wetlands and meadows of Long Valley. Even before recorded time, the Nuumu, which in the Paiute language means "the people," lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as they migrated through the Eastern Sierra, following available game and harvest times. In Long Valley, or Pugwihuu/Tacabe Wat as these ancestral homelands are known, Nuumu people could collect seeds, herbs for medicines and teas, wild, tall grasses to make baskets, and the volcanic obsidian of the mountains for tools, stewarding the land with fire and water diversions to ensure resource growth and replenishment.
Settlers: Cowboys and Livestock
Around the 1850s, white settlers arrived in the Eastern Sierra, violently displacing many of the indigenous peoples. The wetlands and meadows of Long Valley were turned into ranchland, the water was channeled across the land to grow grasses for cattle. The hunting and gathering ecosystems so familiar and manageable to the original inhabitants of the Eastern Sierra suffered under the new land regime, forcing many indigenous survivors to work on white ranches and farms just so they continue to live on their homelands. Many of the ranching families who have leases in Long Valley today are descendants of the families who owned these ranches around the turn of the century until either Los Angeles’ pressure, the Great Depression, or some combination of both, forced them to sell.
The Mayor's Ranch
At the beginning of the 20th century, the infamous Frederick Eaton, former Mayor of Los Angeles and one of the “Three Fathers of the Los Angeles Aqueduct,” along with William Mulholland and Joseph B. Lippincott, moved to Long Valley. In 1906, Eaton incorporated his Eaton Land and Cattle Company, with 12,000 acres of original holdings. While buying up land in the Owens Valley for Los Angeles, he also tried to sell the 23,000 acres of Long Valley land he owned, known as Eaton Ranch, to that city for the building of a dam and a massive storage reservoir. His asking price was too high and as a result he had a falling out with his aqueduct partner, William Mulholland, who instead built the St. Francis Dam in Los Angeles County's San Francisquito Canyon.
For some time, Long Valley was enjoyed by the Eaton family: the eldest daughter, Helen Armstrong, ran a hot springs resort called Whitmore Tubbs and the Eaton Ranch land was even used to make movies in the 1920s, giving Long Valley a role in the Eastern Sierra western film history. The landscape of Long Valley was temporarily spared even more changes.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Takes Control
Yet Eaton’s vision for a dam in Long Valley, though delayed, would ultimately come to fruition. As Eaton’s personal finances suffered in 1928, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was able to acquire his land. That same year, the St. Francis Dam failed, resulting in 400 deaths, and a new reservoir was needed as part of Los Angeles’ water storage system. Construction of the Long Valley Dam began, vastly changing the landscape of Long Valley as wetlands and meadows were flooded to create the Crowley Lake reservoir.
Right The Long Valley Dam via the Library of Congress
After the completion of the Long Valley Dam and Crowley Lake reservoir in 1941, column-like formations were revealed on the lake's eastern shore as the water eroded the hillside. Known as the Crowley Lake Columns, these structures are another remnant of Long Valley's volcanic past: In 2015 researchers from the University of California Berkeley determined the columns are made of minerals that are resistant to erosion and originated from the volcanic explosion that first created the Long Valley Caldera. The researchers suggested that falling snow melted on top of the rock deposits after the eruption and the warm, porous rock then caused the melted snow to boil, creating even spaces between the columns.
Crowley Lake was named for Father John J. Crowley, a Catholic priest who served in the Owens Valley area in the 1920s and '30s. Father Crowley is remembered in Owens Valley history most prominently not for his religious preaching, but for his encouragement of tourism: When the city of Los Angeles' land and water grab had almost entirely destroyed the agricultural economy of the Owens Valley and the nation was gripped by the Great Depression, many residents lost all hope. Father Crowley traveled the Eastern Sierra convincing those who remained that it could become a tourist destination instead.
Right A mural in honor of Father Crowley can also be found in Downtown Bishop. Photo via Mapio
Today
Father Crowley's vision for the future has come to be. He knew that the scenic beauty of this land of extremes would draw people: today Inyo County Visitor boasts "the highest, lowest, deepest, and oldest." In 2018, Death Valley National Park, which contains the lowest point in North America, had a record number of visitors: 1,678,660. On the other extreme of the contiguous United States' highest point, more than 20,000 people summit Mt. Whitney every year. In the northern Eastern Sierra, the outdoor recreation/tourism industry accounts for 80% of all employment in Mono County and although Mammoth Lakes, the only incorporated town in the county, has a resident population of only 8,296, during peak visitation the town's population can be more than 35,000.
Long Valley and Crowley Lake itself see a great deal of these visitors. Today, Crowley Lake is the hot spot for Mono County's fishing season opening day, dubbed "Fishmas," every April. With 45 miles of shoreline, Crowley Lake now features a marina, RV sites, boat rentals and a café for visitors. Beyond fishing, the lake is an Audubon Society Important Bird Area loved by birders, a scenic area full of photo opportunities (such as at the Crowley Lake Columns), and is used for a variety of water sports such as stand up paddle boarding, kayaking, water skiing, wake boarding, wake surfing, and jet skiing.
Our Future
Towns up and down the Eastern Sierra now rely on the area's natural beauty and associated recreation activities as the main sources of their economic prosperity. The tourism industry that today abounds upon and around Crowley Lake, however, comes at the historical expense of the environment, with the flooding of wetlands and the loss of traditional indigenous stewardship and livelihoods that occurred to make the reservoir. Today, we recognize that we must balance the needs of the environment with our community needs- and our community’s needs are inextricably linked to the environment’s health due to our reliance on nature’s beauty for tourism. We have Crowley Lake now. We have a booming tourism industry now. If Long Valley is dewatered, will Crowley Lake be as beautiful a place to visit and will it be healthy to do so, with fire and dust issues? When Long Valley is dewatered for Los Angeles’ thirst, what will we have?
November Wrap-up:
Keep Long Valley Clean!
We had our first Adopt-a-Highway cleanup Saturday November 19th, with coffee, donuts, and lots of fun! There was a surprising amount of trash atop the snow: when getting out of your car at the beautiful vista points in Long Valley, please remember to secure all trash, small objects, and mittens (so many mittens!) lest your belongings end up on the other side of our trash grabbers.
Thanks to all who came out, we hope to see everyone again for our spring clean-up!
Without Water is Now Streaming Online!
Without Water has finished its film festival circuit- you can now watch our film, Without Water, for FREE, online, anytime!
Credits:
Allison Weber photo credits unless otherwise stated