Awhile back a friend sent me an article about Chico State’s Eagle Lake Biological Field Station, that I have wrote about. What caught my attention was the last sentence: “Eagle Lake is rich in biological resources and is the only lakeside fresh water biological research project on the west coast.”

The fate of the university’s field station is not known, its doors have been shuttered for sometime.

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Some may find this of interest. The lake has only dropped 1.59 feet this year and is 4.21 feet above this time last year. Several of my colleagues, including myself, thought this was rather remarkable. When one considers that the summer was abnormally hot this year, one would assume that due to evaporation the level of the lake would have dropped more. One explanation is that it might be possible that the springs underneath lake have recharged from the previous winter, thus offsetting the evaporation. I want to thank Don Willis, Lassen County Surveyor who on the first of every month monitors the lake level and provided this information.

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What would Eagle Lake be like if it were not for Norma? It is something that crossed my mind as I scan the Gallatin photograph collection. Norma Virginia Harvey was born in 1910 at San Francisco, the only grandchild of Malvena Gallatin. It was because of Norma, that Malvena built the first summer home at Eagle Lake in 1913, which she dubbed the Cedar Lodge, but is better known as Gallatin House. For the remainder of that decade the extended Gallatin clan were frequent visitors at Eagle Lake. At that the time the house was constructed Eagle Lake kept rising to historic high levels and this troubled Malvena. After all, a portion of her timberland along the lakeshore was flooded. In 1914, she invited a civil engineer by the name of Leon Bly to Eagle Lake to see about reviving the failed attempts to tap Eagle Lake for irrigation, that at the same time would regulate the level of the lake. Bly’s tunnel and a twenty year drought would greatly reduce the water level of the lake. By the 1920s, the Gallatin’s visits were few and far between. In the 1930s, Malvena attempted to sale her Eagle Lake property to a developer, but it failed due to the low water level of the lake. In 1944, Norma passed away, and that Christmas Malvena returned to Cedar Lodge for the last time. In 1946, Malvena sold all of her Eagle Lake holdings except for her summer home that eventually would be given to Norma’s son. Thus, Norma’s birth led to an interesting chain of events at Eagle Lake.

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Originally known as Papoose Valley and some time in the 1920s it was changed to Papoose Meadows.

In 1933, the Baxter Creek and Tule Irrigation Districts sought funding from the Civil Works Administration to lower intake at the Bly Tunnel at Eagle Lake. There was a problem since Malvena Gallatin and Jim Fritter had filed an injunction to prevent lowering the lake from the irrigation districts. At a CWA hearing J.A. Pardee who represented the districts in his argument stated “It is a most worthy project and complies in every way with the terms of the CWA, but there is an injunction in force against lowering Eagle Lake. We are not asking to lower the lake,” said Pardee, We only want to lower the intake.”
After a long pause the CWA director threw up his hands and said “You win,” smiling he continued, “You get what you came after.” The bottom line, the districts use of lowering the intake, did not necessarily relate to lowering the lake. With that the government gave the districts $25,000 worth of labor and materials for lowering the intake.

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The intrepid traveler of yore faced many daunting obstacles whether on an emigrant trail or the road less traveled, due to the terrain. Some times those routes were improved and some times they were abandoned. A prime example was Eagle Lake’s Heartfailure Grade between Spaulding Tract and Bucks Bay. It originally had a grade of 18%, but in 1976, the road was redesigned and the grade was reduced to 7 %.