Photos by Kathy Kelly

Loon Lake California at Sunset. One of my favorite places to be on Earth as I have had many of the best times of my life in this area and a few there weren’t… as a few hours after I took this photo a Bear came into my camp and 'evicted me'. The nuisance bears have been transferred to that 'remote area' from other locations where they posed a greater threat to the public. This photo was taken looking towards the Sacramento Valley from my favorite camping location at Loon Lake in Sierra Nevada's Crystal Basin. I first started going there to fish and camp with my father in 1958 when 3 dams in the area were still under construction, eventually creating or increasing the capacity of Ice House, Union Valley and Loon Lakes’. More information here regarding the history of this area…

http://www.gerlecreek.com/documents/gerlecreek.htm

“…this Company, originated and capitalized in San Francisco, was central to early development of resources in the Georgetown Divide area, building a Loon Lake log dam initially along with a ditch to connect Gerle Creek to Hanna's Camp by 1874. This trial dam was followed by building the granite stone dam to replace the original nine foot high log dam at Loon Lake in 1881-1882 using Chinese labor which stood till removed in 1962 for the current earth filled dam built in 1963. The companies need to support their ditch and flume structures to bring the water from Loon Lake to Georgetown also necessitated their building the South Fork Mill,( between 1874 and 1880) a water powered saw mill at Hanna's Camp, which still stands today.