Gerber Reservoir is a popular outdoor recreation site with two campgrounds along its west shore.

Native Americans occupied sites around what is now Gerber Reservoir for perhaps 6,400 years before the first European settlers arrived in the area.

Family bands of Klamath and Modoc peoples used these sites from early spring through fall for hunting, fishing, and plant gathering activities.

In the mid-1880s, Gerber used the Swamp Act to acquire 840 acres (340 ha) along Miller Creek on the high plateau northeast of the Langell Valley.

This area was flooded when the Bureau of Reclamation completed the Miller Creek impoundment dam in June 1925.

[5][4][6] During World War II, the island in the middle of Gerber Reservoir was used as a United States military bombing range.

[7] Gerber Reservoir is located on the east side of the Cascade Range in southern Oregon.

From there, the water flows southwest through Miller Creek Canyon to the Langell Valley, where it runs into the Lost River.

[6] There are three primary vegetation zones that make up the watershed: coniferous forest, juniper woodlands, and shrub-steppe.

There are also some meadow lands within the pine forest zone and in riparian areas along drainages that empty into the reservoir from the north and south.

Other common forest plants include ceanothus, huckleberry, snowberry, blue elderberry, chokecherry, twinberry, and serviceberry.

Flowering plants include lupine, vetch, asters, biscuitroot, balsamroot, wild strawberry, yarrow, and dandelion.

There are also quaking aspen in the upland meadows areas dispersed within the pine forest portion of the watershed.

Mountain mahogany, low sagebrush, rabbitbrush, and gray horsebrush are common in some areas.

Grasses include Idaho fescue, bluebunch wheatgrass, bottlebrush squirreltail, granite prickly-phlox, western needlegrass, and Sandberg bluegrass.

Other vegetation includes rabbitbrush, spiny hopsage, wax currant, balsamroot, desert parsley, willow dock, blazing star, sunflower, plains mustard, tarweed, manna grass, buckwheat, and ryegrass.

As a result, the weather in the Gerber area is typical of high plateaus in the northern Basin and Range Province.

The largest crappie ever caught at the reservoir weighed well over 4 pounds (1.8 kg), an Oregon state record.

[2][6][13][14] In addition to fish, the reservoir provide habitat for a wide variety of bird species.

Other bird species common to the area are Steller's jay, pinyon jay, scrub jay, American robin, hermit thrush, western bluebird, mountain bluebird, western meadowlark, horned lark, Cassin's finch, sagebrush sparrow, lark sparrows cedar waxwing, brown creeper, mountain chickadee, dark-eyed junco, red-breasted nuthatch, yellow-rumped warblers, red crossbill, northern oriole, green-tailed towhee, Lazuli bunting, plain titmouse, purple martin, cliff swallow, rock wren, Hammond's flycatcher, American dusky flycatcher, western kingbird, brown-headed cowbird, pine siskin, sage thrasher, and two hummingbird species.

[2][15][16] The mixed conifer forest, juniper woodlands, and shrub-steppe zones around the reservoir are home to numerous mammals, both large and small.

In addition to mule deer, the larger mammals include pronghorn, Roosevelt elk, coyote, American black bear, bobcat, and cougar.

Together, they provide a wide range of facilities including potable water, restrooms, campsites, picnic tables, cooking grills, boat ramps, floating docks, and fish cleaning stations.

Visitors who happen upon an archeological sites are asked to contact the Bureau of Land Management office in Klamath Falls.

To get to the Gerber Reservoir campgrounds from Klamath Falls, take Route 140 east to Dairy, Oregon.