San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation

1, located 37 miles from Fresno on Willow Creek, a tributary of the San Joaquin River.

[4] Combined with several years of drought, this diversion of water forced San Joaquin Electric into bankruptcy in 1899.

Bondholders, seeking to protect their investment by providing the company's powerhouse a steady source of water, financed the 1901 construction of what would become the hydraulic fill Crane Valley Dam and the reservoir of Bass Lake.

[3][8] San Joaquin Power also reached a separate 1903 agreement with the California Gas and Electric Company—which would merge with the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company two years later to create PG&E—setting territories for electrical service, drawing a line that extended roughly from the southern border of Santa Cruz County east to the southern border of Mono County.

[2] North American subsequently sold its interests in the combined utilities to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in 1930 in exchange for $114 million in PG&E stock, creating a single consolidated utility serving most of Northern and Central California.