Construction on Lake Hemet Dam began in 1891 and was completed four years later in October 1895. Standing 122.5 feet high, it was the largest solid masonry dam in the world for sixteen years. Before the dam could be built, a road from Hemet to Garner Valley had to be constructed to carry supplies and equipment to the site, with grades reaching 18 percent in some places. The reservoir area was cleared of trees, and one million board feet of lumber from those trees was used for buildings, construction forms, flumes, and scaffolding. Much of the dam was made of granite stones weighing between 5 and 15 tons each, quarried from the surrounding bluffs, and the thousands of stones were secured with Portland Cement imported from Belgium. In 1923, the Lake Hemet Water Company increased reservoir capacity by raising the dam 12.5 feet to its present height of 135 feet.