Old Bear Valley Dam

Frank Elwood Brown was a citrus farmer who needed water in the valley below, so in 1884 he built a single granite arch across this meadow. Engineers said it would not stand. It stood, they called it the eighth wonder of the world, and the reservoir behind it drowned some nine thousand trees to become briefly the largest artificial lake anywhere. In 1912 a higher dam went up two hundred feet west. Brown's arch is now underwater itself, most of the year.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Original McDonald's Site — 20 mi
  The corner where two brothers invented fast food, now an unofficial museum the corporation has never blessed.
• Wigwam Motel — 23 mi
  Nineteen concrete teepees on Foothill Boulevard, the last of Frank Redford's Wigwam Villages and still renting rooms.
• Cajon Pass — 26 mi
  The gap the San Andreas tore between two mountain ranges, and the doorway every westbound traveler has used for two centuries.

More markers nearby

• Holcomb Valley — 7.7 mi
• Daley Toll Road Monument — 14 mi
• Chimney Rock — 14 mi
• The Zanja — 17 mi