Shasta Lake City: Born from the Dam

When the federal government announced in nineteen thirty-seven that it would build Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River, hundreds of construction workers and their families arrived in the canyon with nowhere to live. They built their own communities on the hillsides: Central Valley, Pine Grove, Project City, Toyon, Summit City. Frank Crowe, the superintendent who had built Hoover Dam, was chosen to direct the work.

The dam itself was finished in nineteen forty-five. The communities it spawned kept growing even after the construction crews left, sustained by tourism, fishing on the reservoir, and the businesses that had grown up to serve them. For decades they remained unincorporated.

Then in nineteen ninety-three, sixty percent of residents voted to consolidate and incorporate as the City of Shasta Lake, a municipality that exists entirely because of a federal water project launched during the Depression.