Goose Lake - Modoc County, California

Visited on 6/9/2018 on our way back from Springfield, Oregon to visit family and to attend Jeff’s niece, Hannah’s High School graduation ceremony.  We stopped on the way back to check out this extremely large 94,000 acre shallow lake that rests on the California-Oregon border at an elevation of 4,800 feet.  This huge remote lake is in the most northeastern section of the State of California and it is primarily used for waterfowl hunting and boating.  We camped at the Goose Lake Recreation Area at state line on the Oregon side of the road.  The campground is nice with spacious sites maintained by the Oregon State Parks System.  This rural area has wonderful wildflowers this time of year and we were able to photograph beautiful orange large poppies that seem to grow in clusters accompanied by nice purple wildflowers.  Goose Lake is a large alkaline lake in the Goose Lake Valley on the Oregon–California border in the United States. Like many other lakes in the Great Basin, it is a pluvial lake that formed from precipitation and melting glaciers during the Pleistocene epoch. The north portion of the lake is in Lake County, Oregon, and the south portion is in Modoc County, California. The mountains at the north end of the lake are part of the Fremont National Forest, and the south end of the lake is adjacent to Modoc National Forest lands. Most of the valley property around the lake is privately owned agricultural land, though Goose Lake State Recreation Area is on the Oregon side of the lake.

Goose Lake is the center of a semi-closed drainage basin. Its watershed is normally endorheic, but sometimes flows into the Pit River, part of the Sacramento River watershed, during periods of high water following heavy rainfall or snowmelt.