1969 Lopez Lake opens
January 7, 2009 – 4:45 pm
January 4, 1969
It would be a watershed year.The Beatles were starting the project that would bring the band’s divisions to the surface. This was their last full year of recording together and the breakup would be announced in April 1970.Midnight Cowboy would win best picture, the only film rated X to win an Academy Award. The biggest box office picture would be Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.In San Luis County the water supply for much of the south county was about to be secured.Quoting from the story by staff writer Jack Magee:
The Lopez Project is now Lopez Lake.Water is already being stored behind the huge, sprawling earthfill dam.Completion of the main project is scheduled by May, in time for the summer, just two years from the start of construction. Total cost will be about $16.5 million.“If the dam had been completed in December of 1966, the lake would be two-thirds full now,” says county hydraulic engineer Robert Born.That would be because of the heavy rainfall two years ago.
They expected the lake to take years to fill, but unknown to everyone, this was a watershed year.Photos were by David Ranns
One Response to “1969 Lopez Lake opens”
As a kid, I accompanied my Dad’s Boy Scout troop when they camped on the ranch. They usually hiked up the Wittenberg canyon (now the west “arm”)to where the water ski landing is now found. I was also one of the crazy kids that “surfed SLO” in 1969 during the flood.
By SSG David Medzyk on Jan 7, 2009