Quail Lake - Los Angeles County, California

Visited on 4/12/2018 while traveling to Southern California for a work assignment, Quail Lake is located 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles and 30 miles from Santa Clarita at the junction of Highway 138 and  Interstate 5 in the Los Padres National Forest.  Quail Lake is an artificial lake in Los Angeles County, California. Situated in the San Andreas Rift Zone along the north side of State Route 138, it is a regulatory storage body for the West Branch California Aqueduct.  This 120 acre lake is located at 3,337 feet above sea level and is the first body of water for the of the West Branch California Aqueduct, which is a part of the California State Water Project.  Quail Lake, located in the Tejon Ranch area of the western Antelope Valley, is one of the 29 storage facilities of the State Water Project. Maintained and operated by the Department of Water Resources, Quail Lake — a pond created by a cataclysmic movement of the San Andres Fault ages ago — was enlarged to move water safely across the infamous fault.  As part of the West Branch of the State Water Project, the lake provides regulatory water storage for power generation at Warne Powerplant during peak demand periods. When water is released from the lake, it flows from the lake through the Lower Quail Canal and enters the Peace Valley Pipeline. The pipeline then takes the water over five miles to the Warne Powerplant for electric energy production.  Before European settlers arrived, Native Americans camped on the banks of what is now Quail Lake. Still visible are bedrock mortars used by the early inhabitants to grind nuts and berries. The Spaniards led by Captain Pedro Fages came later, leaving present-day names like Tejon (Badger) and La Canada de las Uvas (Grapevine Pass). It was not until 1846 that General Jose Maria Flores formed La Liebre Ranch with a land grant from Pio Pico, California’s last Mexican governor. Another general, Edward F. Beale, bought the property in 1855, shaping it into a 297,000-acre ranch still known today as Tejon Ranch.