Taming the Waters’ Flow

In the spring of 1866, Anthony Chabot saw the waters of San Leandro Creek collide with Grass Valley Creek, studied the surrounding watershed, and decided the site could support a reservoir year-round. Building the dam required engineering creativity and faced setbacks, including the fall of 1874, when rains washed 21,000 cubic yards of the earthen dam wall downstream; that sediment is believed to have created Arrowhead Marsh at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline. After the dam was rebuilt, the reservoir served as the main water supply for Oakland and San Leandro from 1876 to 1926. Upper San Leandro Reservoir in 1926 and Pardee Reservoir in 1928 supplemented Lake Chabot water, and in 1964 Lake Chabot was placed on stand-by for emergency drinking supply only. An earlier dam had stood near the same site in 1860, when William Heath Davis, son-in-law of Don José Joaquin Estudillo, built a smaller earthen brush dam to provide water for Estudillo’s Ranch San Leandro, now the City of San Leandro.

Oakland, California · United States