1884 Rock Dam

 place with historical importance, dam, interesting place, historical layer / disappeared object

The first Bear Valley Dam was constructed in 1884 at a cost of $75,000. It was built to create a reservoir for downstream irrigation uses in Redlands, resulting in the largest man-made body of water in the world at the time. When Frank E. Brown engineered this dam, he couldn't have possibly envisioned the role Big Bear Lake would play in the future development of the surrounding mountain communities.

Following the completion of this first dam, the valley experienced many years of above average snowfall and plans were made to create an even larger storage reservoir. This included construction of a 65 foot high rock-filled dam, located 300 feet downstream from the original dam. However this project ended in bankruptcy and in 1909 new designs were considered. In 1910, Bear Valley Mutual Water Company retained an engineer to design and oversee the construction of the current concrete dam.

The storage capacity of the newly created Lake was 25,000 acre feet (one acre foot is enough water for a family of four for one year). Many engineers claimed that this single arch granite dam would not hold.

Sometime later, those same doubting engineers declared it "The Eighth Wonder of the World". This dam is still generally intact, but is usually submerged beneath the higher 1912 dam.