Spreckels Lake
Spreckels Lake is an artificial, clay-lined, reservoir holding around 7.8 million gallons (23.94 acre feet/29,530,000 liters) of non-potable (not-drinkable) well-water[3][not specific enough to verify] behind an earthen dam that forms its western edge, walkway, and the 36th Avenue roadbed, which crosses the top of the dam after entering Golden Gate Park at Fulton Street.
"[5] Designed specifically for model boating and measuring approximately 950 feet (east–west) by 420 feet at its widest, the irregularly shaped "Model Yacht Lake" began being filled with water pumped into it from the underground aquifers near Ocean Beach by the Dutch Windmill on January 14, 1904, when Spreckels and Park Superintendent John McLaren "directed the adjustment of the valve".
Originally budgeted at $21,000 in late January 1903 (approximately $567,568.00(us) in 2015 dollars) by the Park Commissioners,[9] the as yet unnamed lake was built over the next 13 months with a 'natural', sloping shoreline and redwood retaining wall covered with fist- to foot-sized rocks to stabilize the soil and resist erosion.
Over the past 30 years, however, the walkway has increasingly suffered from subsidence of the soil beneath the asphalt and repairs have required draining the lake on more than one occasion to shore up or patch the foundation of the retaining wall where it has been undercut.
The bottom away from the older hard-pack soil close to the sides, is a layer of accumulated fine silt and organic detritus probably two or more feet thick which contributes to the murkiness of the water and gets a bit thicker every year.
Model boats that sink in the lake may actually submerge into this heavy muck and may become irretrievable by most methods short of hiring a diver.
[10] for the use of the club in perpetuity using a combination of donations raised by SFMYC members by private subscriptions (the majority), federal assistance and help from San Francisco city government.
The current clubhouse replaced an earlier building salvaged by SFMYC members and the City of San Francisco from the remnants of the 'little' St. Francis Hotel after its removal from Union Square.
It was rebuilt near the proposed but never built Polo Fields Stadium site[11] with a budget of $16,000[12] in 1909 and served the club until they moved to their current building in 1938.
Early traditions tell of open-water model sailing competitions on San Francisco Bay held between the boardwalk of Miegg's Pier and Goat Island (Yerba Buena Island)[11] as well as on Lake Merritt in Oakland, CA and Marin County's Richardson Bay where the competition was sometimes between the crews of the many cargo ships anchored there.
The first boat to win on the new lake was then club Vice-Commodore Henry London's "Imp," the "Sautee," owned by L. S. Adams finished second.
In addition to many individual model boaters, the most prominent and organized group using the lake on a regular basis is still the SFMYC but there are others as well.
The lake has also been the site of a number of regional and national championships under the auspices of the American Model Yachting Association (AMYA).
The "Spreckles Irregulars" are a loosely affiliated but very active informal group of model boating hobbyists and friends who are regulars at the southern lakeside.
They mainly operate many types of model power boats, both liquid fueled and electric, as well as a few sailboats but are not affiliated with the SFMYC for any number of reasons.
The "Irregulars" are unstructured in that they do not hold events or races at the lake, but are content to meet in the late mornings on nearly every weekend day and sometimes during the week to run their models and enjoy the convivial company of fellow enthusiasts.
Powered boats are forbidden to run on the northern side of the lake to keep from creating noise issues with the neighborhood bordering on Fulton Street.
The surrounding trees are good habitat for squirrels and other foragers as well as hunting territory for predatory species such as heron and coyote.
Not only because of park rules, but because to coyotes, large dogs are competitors in their hunting grounds or interlopers in their cubbing territory, and small pets may be eaten.
Birds known to habituate to the lake in addition to feral pigeons and seagulls include common ducks and mallards, coots, grebes, swallows, cormorants, herons and egrets and, occasionally, domestic geese.
There is a 'tradition' of dumping goldfish in many of Golden Gate Park's lakes, sometimes by the bucketfuls, for good luck as well as a means of 'freeing' unwanted pets.
There used to be a small population of cats composed of "'outside' house-pets," discarded pets and ferals, though they are now rarely seen, possibly due to predation by the coyotes that recently have moved into the park after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge from Marin County as early as 2004.
[24][25] As of May 2013, any restoration efforts made to the lake of the last 20 years have, with the exception of the addition of the aeration system, mainly been patches, done in a piecemeal fashion for a number of reasons, lack of sufficient funding apparently being a leading factor.
