Re: Emigrant - Cow Meadow check dam

Does anyone have pictures of the dam and/or "lake" at Cow Meadow? I'm not sure when it was breached/removed, but I believe it wasn't very long ago - in the past 5 years maybe? It seems to have been a relatively shallow height (especially compared to Emigrant Lake or Y-Meadow). I'm curious to see before & after (I have "after" pix) and wonder how the rest of the check dams will fare now the ruling to let them decay is final (as much as anything is final I suppose).

Have you seen this book?

Leighton's High Sierra Check Dam Legacy: A Photographic Journal

?

There's also a Emigrant Dam book.

Sorry, I have been to lots of the Emigrant... but not Cow Meadow ...

It's on the list... (Emigrant TQ is TBD... )

---

Quote
chick-on
Have you seen this book?

Leighton's High Sierra Check Dam Legacy: A Photographic Journal?
...

Yup - that's how I finally answered one of the first burning questions I had after our first trip to the Emigrant (Y-Meadow, to be exact):

"What the heck is this dam doing here? There's no grazing and even so it's way too big as a water source for cattle. There is not now, nor is there any remaining signs of a much larger community existing here. The water isn't being diverted for human use elsewhere. And it's in the middle of nowhere. How did they get this material (concrete) in here, and why? Why?"

I've been able to find a lot of one-/two-off pages online, but unable to find a copy of the complete book in print (for less than a king's ransom). It's a really interesting story too (IMO).

Funny story: after stumbling on Fred Leighton's cabin on another trip (accidentally - I didn't know it existed... and it resulted in yet another "why the heck is this cabin *here*?" question to ponder), we ended up changing our itinerary due to weather and other stuff. So we ended up at Kennedy Meadow and our vehicle was at Leavitt Lake - so we thumbed a ride. It ended up that the gentleman that picked us up was Fred's hired hand as a boy. He used to paddle him (Fred) around in "his" lakes. I hadn't yet even figured out who's cabin it was or why it was there. It didn't look like the typical NPS ranger cabin though. And he was a really great guy. He was going to just drop us off at Sonora Pass (his destination) but he ended up extending his route and then backtracking - just out of kindness to us - and dropped us off "at the doorstep" at the Leavitt TH. We've met some of the nicest, down-to-earth people this way. (Of course, when we meet the next infamous Sierra Serial Killer, you won't know about it (from us anyway))...

Thanks for that story.

Sounds like you've met a few nuts out there too...

If haven't... you may want to check this out too:
https://books.google.com/books?id=_KU2AQAAMAAJ

---

Thanks for that link, I hadn't found that document.

I skimmed it and find that my statement above (while "squishy" was not correct. The doc you linked is dated 2003. One table indicates that Cow Meadow dam was no longer in existence at that time (hence it was to be rebuilt, rather than repaired, as all others (designated in the finding to be maintained)).

So I'm interested in a picture of the dam (before 2003) likely taken by "modern era" visitors, showing it intact, but with better quality that the few that I already found, which seem to typically have been taken at the time of construction or shortly after. I don't recall if I even found any grainy, poor-quality b&w photos of CM dam (it was pretty low and not terribly impressive, I *think*)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2018 01:39PM by ags.