Crowley Lake

Part of Long Valley was flooded by the city of Los Angeles in 1941 to form Crowley Lake, the largest reservoir of the LA Aqueduct system in Mono County. Paradoxically, Crowley Lake’s creation came about because in the water rich years of the 1930s, the DWP had to divert excess water back into the valley through the Alabama Gates, thereby flooding the mineral operations in Owens Lake. Crowley Lake now helps regulate the water supply by absorbing the excess water. The lake is named after Father John J. Crowley, “the desert Padre,” who was a key figure in Owens Valley history and a local hero. When it became obvious that the city of Los Angeles’s appropriation of the water supply had made agriculture impossible in the Owens Valley, many of the residents of the Valley lost all hope. Father Crowley traveled up and down the Valley, convincing many of them that it could become a tourist destination. Thus, it is fitting that while it exists to serve the Los Angeles aqueduct, Crowley Lake is also a prime destination for anglers. 30,000 fisherman gather on shore and in boats to mark the beginning of fishing season. Father Crowley was killed in 1940 in an automobile accident.

North of Bishop, the road climbs steeply toward Long Valley, a caldera formed by a gigantic volcanic eruption 760,000 years ago. Unlike typical volcanos, this was an example of an entire volcanic field coming to life simultaneously. Some 150 cubic miles of 1500?Ǭ?F pumice and ash were ejected from a series of vents throughout the area. Some of the molten Bishop tuff flowed southeast past Big Pine, forming the volcanic tablelands visible north of the town while some flowed over the Sierra Nevada into the drainage for the San Joaquin river while a sizeable fraction was ejected up to twenty-five miles in the air and carried as far away as eastern Nebraska and Kansas. With the eruption of the magma, the ground subsided, creating a two mile deep depression from Mammoth Mountain to the end of Crowley Lake that was in turn filled to about two-thirds full by falling tuff, a pinkish-red rock. The last eruption in Long Valley was in the Mono-Inyo Crater area about 500-600 yearsago.