(BTW, In last month’s report, I told of Murray Hunt. He was, as I wrote, representing Spartan Typographer. In 1970, Murray visited the studio where I worked (the Wharfside Building, across from the Cannery). Murray gave me this gift of this vintage wood type from his personal collection. At that time the letter had a reddish smooth surface. If I would’ve known better, I would have kept it in a warm dry area. It has changed during the last forty-plus years.)
In 1970 I was 28 years old.The assignment for Spring Valley Lake was one of the many varied assignments that I had as a free-lance artist. This assignment was from Wilton, Coombs & Colnett, Inc., an agency which was located at 40 Hotaling Place (the oldest alley in San Francisco).
Their client for this 2 page newspaper ad was Boise Cascade Properties Sales Corporation Exclusive Sales Agents, located in Beverly Hills. The location of this new man-made lake, for housing and recreation, was north of San Bernardino and a little south of Victorville.
The copy in the ad says:
“It’s about a 90-minute ride from downtown Los Angeles…Who Knows, if you’ve taken a fancy in a particular lot by noon you’ll be able to have an old-fashioned picnic right there on you own land! The new property offered a private country club, designer by Cliff May, a challenging Robert Trent Jones golf course, equestrian center in the “western tradition” , a master-planned second home community, on “A Lake with a Future, Just 96 Freeway Miles from Los Angeles”.
With no way to search information about this development in those days, I was just given the shape of the new lake. and asked to add the recreational opportunities. If I had had today’s online searches, I could have followed information from the site and even seen the photos of the creation of the lake. Today, one can find the cost of buying a home in that community.
I found this on-line:
Lake construction began in June 1969. The excavation of the lake basin was one of the largest earth moving projects in the history of the Victor Valley at that time. On January 1, 1970, pumps began to fill the lake with 1,080,000,000 gallons of water. It took slightly over one month for the mile long lake basin to be filled.
Spring Valley Lake houses a 200 surface acre man-made lake.
Loss from evaporation is probably much heavier than most people would believe. Ninety inches of water a year is lost to evaporation, sixteen inches per month during the months of June and July. That means the loss of two thousand gallons every minute of the day during June and July or an annual loss of 1500 acre feet of water. This puts the water lost to evaporation at many millions of gallons yearly. The lake is everyone’s concern as property owners in Spring Valley Lake each own a share.
Here above, are photos of Cliff Wilton and Samm Coombs from our 2009 annual Geezer picnic at the Corte Madera Park. This was about 40 years after the Spring Valley Lake assignment.
Ann Thompson