Lake Hemet — the mountain reservoir at the head of Garner Valley, held back by an 1895 stone dam that was, for sixteen years, the tallest solid masonry dam on Earth.
On your left now you'll catch sight of water — that's Lake Hemet, a mountain reservoir sitting up here at about forty-three hundred feet, ringed by pines and meadow, with the mountains reflected in it on a still morning. It's a pretty spot, popular for fishing and camping, and the geese and ducks work the shallows. But the reason I'm stopping you here is the dam that holds it back, down at the lake's western end — because that plain-looking wall of stone was once a genuine wonder of the world.
When they finished it, back in 1895, the Lake Hemet dam was the tallest solid masonry dam on the entire planet. The tallest anywhere. And they built it up here in the mountains, in the eighteen-nineties, with granite blocks weighing five, ten, fifteen tons apiece, quarried right out of these bluffs and fitted together by hand — a hundred and twenty feet of stone across this canyon, to catch the mountain runoff and send it down to the thirsty farm country in the valley below. It held that world record for sixteen years. Boone's got the whole story of how they pulled it off. For now, just look at that old stone wall with a little respect as you pass — for a while there, in the eighteen-nineties, there was nothing taller of its kind on Earth, and it's up here on a back road in the San Jacinto Mountains. Roll on toward Mountain Center.
Photo: APK · CC BY-SA 4.0
