Bass Lake: A Gold Rush Artifact

Most people who live around Cameron Park and El Dorado Hills know that Bass Lake is on Bass Lake Road, a mile or so north of Highway 50. But few, if any of them know from whence Bass Lake came, or why it is there.

Old-time residents recall that at one time you could picnic and go fishing at Bass Lake. Stories abound, but to many, the lake's origins are lost.

No doubt many would be surprised to learn that Bass Lake, or American Reservoir, as it was known then, was a part of the great mining ditch systems of the California Gold Rush. American Reservoir became the eastern terminus of what was first known as the Eureka Ditch, later as the Crawford Ditch, and then as the Park Canal and Mining Company ditch system.

This is the story of the development of the mining ditches of southern El Dorado County, the story of the ditch companies that built those ditch systems, and how and when Bass Lake, originally known as the American Reservoir, came to be a living artifact of the Gold Rush of 1849.