Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery

Built in 1917, the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery is the earliest and grandest of the hatcheries in the valley. Game fish such as trout were artificially introduced into the streams of the eastern Sierras and the Owens River watershed starting in the 1870s. Some 3,500 tons of native granite collected from within a quarter mile of the site were fit together””?none were cut””?to form the building. The fish native to the area ore of the smaller and less desirable variety, like pupfish and suckers. After whirling disease was found at the premises in the late 1980s, this hatchery stopped hatching or raising fish, and was nearly closed by the state in 1996. Local outcry, and the tourist potential of the sixty-thousand visitors to the site every year kept it open. Today some four million trout eggs are raised here, then transported into other hatcheries in the area which then raise the fry and grow catchable fish for release into the lakes and streams of the Sierras. An interpretive display inside explains the process.