Recent History
Placer County's 1961 bond approval allowed its water agency to seek out water supplies that were not already claimed by others. Loon Lake, south of Hell Hole, was already prescripted, but the rugged, untouched Hell Hole was not. In 1934, the State of California took steps to claim any unclaimed water rights along the American River's three forks. In 1962 the rights to the Rubicon River water were conveyed to Placer County.
The Hell Hole dam, a rock-fill-type dam, was completed across the Rubicon River in December 1964. As the reservoir began filling the dam sprung a leak during a flood event and failed completely the next day. The resulting flood washed down the Middle Fork of the American River and washed away the Greenville Bridge near Auburn.
The Placer County Water Agency began a new dam which was completed two years later and has now stood for 42 years.
Read more about this topic: Hell Hole Reservoir
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)