History
The area around Crystal Lake, before there was a campground and resort, was referred to as Pine Flat. The lake was called Sycamore Lake by R. W. Dawson who lived at Sycamore Flats located down the hill from the lake. The lake has no sycamore trees, so the name was derived from Dawson's place. The area was a great draw for grizzly bears as they seemed to prefer the lake waters to the stream waters. It was a dangerous place for a human to be without a firearm of some sort. Frightful grizzly bear stories abound from the middle 1860s.
In 1887, Judge Benjamin Eaton, an early Pasadenan for whom Eaton Canyon is named, visited the pristine little lake and said, "The water is clear as crystal and the found it good to drink." The lake soon became known as Crystal Lake.
Historic Photographs of Crystal Lake and the surrounding area from 1907 through the mid-1970s show that the campgrounds have been used by "singing cowboys" during the era of black-and-white television, which used to feature cowboy shows. Because the campgrounds could be accessed from Angeles Crest Highway prior to the 1978 landslide, which demolished a half-mile section of State Route 39 four miles (6 km) from Crystal Lake, Hollywood performers and other Los Angeles celebrities and politicians used to frequent the campgrounds because of the easy access across the San Gabriel Mountains.
Read more about this topic: Crystal Lake Recreation Area
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)