Camanche Reservoir flooded tiny village
What was the town like before residents were forced to leave?
By Matt Brown
News-Sentinel Staff Writer
Elaine MacDonnell walked through the ruins of the town where she was born and raised.
The year was 1988, and a severe drought dropped the water in Camanche Reservoir to its lowest level since it was filled in 1963. The town of Camanche, which had been inundated by the reservoir, had emerged.
MacDonnell, 82, recalled strolling past the crumbling foundation of her home.
"I found toys in the mud that my children played with," she said. "It was like walking into the past."
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More than 30 towns across the state were inundated by water to make way for reservoirs. Most of the towns had long been abandoned before they were flooded. Here are some of the most notable inhabited towns that were inundated:
• In 1957, the Solano County town of Monticello was evacuated to make way for Lake Berryessa. The town had a population of 250. Life Magazine chronicled the citizens of Monticello as they moved their belongings out of town.
• The town of Kernville once sat along the banks of the Kern River. When the river was dammed to form Lake Isabella in 1953, the entire Kern County town was moved to higher ground. Now the historic gold mining town has a population of about 2,000 and is a thriving tourist spot.
• At one time the Lake County town of Gravelly Valley had a hotel, general merchandise store, a sawmill, a post office and a school. In 1921, the Scott Dam was built. The post office was moved a mile, all of the buildings were torn down and the graves in the cemetery were moved to make way for Lake Pillsbury.
• The town of Kennett was a copper mining hub from the turn of the 20th century until 1925. It once boasted a population of 10,000 people. Declining copper prices after World War I hit the town hard. It was abandoned in 1944 when the Shasta Dam was built, and it now sits under 400 feet of Lake Shasta water.
— News-Sentinel staff
MacDonnell remembers Camanche before the man-made flood that destroyed her home and displaced the residents of the historic mining community.
The town was a fun place to grow up, she said. There was lots of nature to explore, hills and trees to climb, and there was always a party to go to.
MacDonnell was born and raised in Camanche, a small town on the banks of the Mokelumne River.
"It was a very nice little town," she said. "We had big barbecues and dances in the dance hall. There was always something going on. We used to spend our days floating on the river."
MacDonnell was 37 when she was forced to leave the town along with the other 50 to 100 residents. In 1962, East Bay Municipal Utility District condemned more than 7,000 acres of land to make way for the flood control Camanche Reservoir.
An old EBMUD newspaper ad from the time says, "We hope you remember the people of Camanche and their sacrifice for your future."
MacDonnell recalls her sacrifice.
Her late husband, James, who worked in the Pacific Clay sand mine before it was shuttered, packed up the homestead in the family's 1932 Ford truck and they moved to Ione. Some landowners fought EBMUD, but in the end most of the residents went quietly, according to Sal Manna, a west Calaveras County historian.
Manna has a collection of old newspaper articles documenting the fate of Camanche. The town's original name, Limerick, was changed to Camanche in 1849. Many of the settlers came from Camanche, Iowa.
Manna said the town boomed during the Gold Rush and its population topped out at 1,500.
The settlers were a diverse group, Manna said, coming from Ireland, Italy, China, France and Mexico.
"It was a wild and woolly place," Manna said. "There were a lot of knife fights, a lot of bars."
By the 1960s, the town's population had dipped to less than 100. Residents were given a year to leave their homes before the structures were torn down and the site was flooded. Even the graves were dug up and the coffins moved to other cemeteries in the area.
"There were some amazing stories, but because the town was inundated, their history kind of got lost," Manna said. "Camanche was a dramatic wiping away of history."
MacDonnell recalls the day she had to leave her home, which took her husband seven years to build out of pumice bricks.
"It was a very sad time to see all the destruction," she said. "We had no say. We just had to be out of there. We hated to leave with all the work my husband put into it."
Monte MacDonnell, one of five kids Elaine and James MacDonnell raised in Camanche, was 12 when he had to leave. He watched the one-room school house, where his siblings, his parents and his grandparents went to school, crumble under an EBMUD bulldozer.
"My dad made sure we were the last ones to leave town," he said. "We were devastated."
Today, the foundations of the buildings and a faint outline of the streets are all that's left of the town that sits at the bottom of Camanche Reservoir near the south shore marina.
In dry years, you can see the ruins of the town through the murky water.