Honey Lake is a multi-purpose land unit in planning commission speak, whether dry or full. When Anglo settlement occurred in 1850s lake was a natural asset, initially for recreation. In 1856, a crude sailboat plied the lake, only to turn into a tragedy when the boat capsized, drowning two of its occupants. The following year, one of the west shore’s first established ranches, Clark’s advertised they had two fine boats for fishing and pleasure. In 1881, they still had the only boats on the lake. Of course, in the 1890s, boating both commercial and recreational took off with the establishment on the lake’s eastern shore. If you use the search feature, you can read previous posts about boating on the lake. The lake went dry for a twenty year period (1917-1937), that with other factors boating went by the wayside.

On the recreation theme, there are those rare occurrences when lake is frozen over, turning it into one huge ice skating rink. Like boating, ice-skating had its hazards too. In 1879, Milford school teacher, Truman Ashbrook drowned while ice-skating when he encountered an air pocket, and fell through the ice. There was the 1914 tragedy of Charlie Wilbur. 

Two interesting events occurred when the lake was dry in the early 1930s. In 1931, the dry lake bed was used a summer military camp for training army pilots. More about that in the future. In the fall of 1933, Zeb Johnson and W.H. Tucker were drilling for a water well on the dry lake bed. They struck natural gas. Just like a gold discovery people flocked to file claims. Alas, when analyzed it was low grade, that consisted from decaying vegetable matter.

There is the more recent case of the Honey Lake Conservation Team of the early 2000s that will be explored in the future.

Tim