Lake Hughes developed through transportation, education, waterworks, recreation, and community institutions over many decades. In 1858, the Butterfield Overland Mail Co. carried mail from San Fransisco to the East Coast along a route by Hughes Lake and through San Fransisquito Canyon. In 1869, the one room school near Lake Hughes, now the HELUS School, was the only school between L.A. and Bakersfield at the time. In 1911, the five mile Elizabeth Tunnel beneath Lake Hughes was completed in 1215 days as the largest construction phase of the controversial First L.A. Aqueduct, a project begun in 1905 by William Mulholland and L.A. Mayor Fred Eaton. In 1920, the town, previously called West Elizabeth Lake, was renamed Lake Hughes after Judge Griffith Hughes, who homesteaded there in the late 1800s. In 1926, real-estate developer Clarence Austin bought 40 acres near Lake Hughes to build vacation homes that helped make it a resort destination, and his 1949 birthday party for Trading Post owner Joel B. Hurd began the annual 49ers Day Festival. During the 1930s, the building now known as the Lakes Community Center served as a mess hall and barracks for the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in 1933 by President F.D. Roosevelt to maintain public lands and provide jobs during the Great Depression. Film figures also became tied to the town: Anita Page bought a house there in the 1930s; Dale Evans and Roy Rogers purchased Sky Haven Ranch in 1947; Paul Koslo and his family bought and renovated the Rock Inn in 1973; and in 1999 Paul Newman founded The Painted Turtle with Page and Lou Adler, with the camp opening near Lake Hughes in 2004 for children with special medical needs. By the 1940s Lake Hughes had become a popular camping, boating, and weekend retreat destination. Later community history included flood-control changes that redirected the main wash in the 1960s, use of lake water to help fight the 2013 Powerhouse Fire, and drying of the lake during the drought beginning in 2013. Nearby features and institutions include the Rock Inn, built in 1929 as the Lake Hughes Trading Post; Elizabeth Lake and Hughes Lake, perennial sag ponds; the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, which runs 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to the Canadian border; and San Fransisquito Canyon, which contains the Los Angeles Aqueduct, hydroelectric plants operating since 1917, and the site of the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster.