The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility, commonly referred to as "Spreckels Lake", is an artificial reservoir behind an earthen dam and adjoining clubhouse situated on the northern side of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Completed in mid-March 1904,"Miniature Yachts Race on Spreckels Lake Waters" San Francisco Call, Volume 95, Number 112, March 21, 1904 the reservoir was built for the use of model boaters of all ages, interests, and skill levels, designed specifically for racing model sail and power boats and to propagate the skills and crafts necessary to build and sail competitive model boats of all types. The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility is considered one of the finest examples and one of the most beautiful of the naturalistically styled, man-made model boating facilities in the world and is always open to anyone wishing to sail its waters with few restrictions. The facility is also the permanent home to the San Francisco Model Yacht Club (SFMYC), the organization at whose request Spreckels Lake and the adjoining clubhouses were built and whose history is and always will be irrevocably intertwined with the history of the facility.
The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility
The 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 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. Situated between 36th Avenue and 31st Avenue to the east, on the north side of the Park between Spreckels Lake Drive and Fulton Street to the north and John F. Kennedy Drive to the south, making it part of San Francisco's famed 49-Mile Scenic Drive, the lake is named for sugar-fortune heir and San Francisco Parks Commission President Adolph B. Spreckels. At a meeting of the Park Commissioners on Friday, January 29, 1904, over the objections of Spreckels who had wanted it called the "Model Yacht Lake", the other Commissioners named the lake in his honor "as he originated the enterprise and gave the work throughout his personal attention."
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". The new lake was filled and judged completed by late February or early March of that year,"Model Yachtsman Find New Lake a Success" - San Francisco Call, Volume 95, Number 96, Saturday, March 5, 1904 and the lake model yachting facilities officially opened a little under a month later on Sunday, March 20.
Spreckels Lake is the only San Francisco lake that currently allows any model boating without special permits from the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department (SF Rec. & Parks) under their interpretation of the law. Anyone may sail most types of model boats on Spreckels Lake with few restrictions.
Since its construction, Spreckels Lake has been home to the San Francisco Model Yacht Club (SFMYC), whose application to the Park Commissioners in 1902 for a dedicated model boating site other than the crowded Blue Heron Lake (then known as Stow Lake) resulted in the creation of Spreckels Lake. The SFMYC has sailed various kinds of model watercraft on it continuously since before the day it opened.
Construction
Originally budgeted at $21,000 in late January 1903 (approximately $567,568(us) in 2015 dollars) by the Park Commissioners, 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. Spreckels Lake's redwood, pile-driven side-walls were later redesigned and retrofitted sometime during the 1930s with the current concrete system which was built directly over much of the original shoreline, burying it under raised back-fill and raising the water level of the lake. This also softened the original contours of the lake better suiting the operation of the types of 'sail-driven,' self-guided yachts then, and still used, by the SFMYC. This combination of vertical edging and approximately 36-plus-inch depth at the bank allows these deeply keeled yachts to approach all the way to the lake edge while remaining afloat. When drained, much of the reservoir's original contour can again be seen outlined by the original rocks.
The original packed-earth walkway, which can be seen in the old postcards and photos of that era, was replaced at the same time with an asphalt-paved walkway surrounding the lake atop earthen backfill behind the retaining wall. 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. In 2013, a substantial portion of the southeastern bank, about 160 feet in length, had to be completely demolished and replaced with a new, reinforced, deep foundation retaining wall; however at least one other area of the walkway and old wall now shows similar early signs of distress, cracking and collapse.
The depth of the reservoir in 2013 is between three and five feet around the edge to around six feet or so at the deepest in the middle of the eastern portion of the Lake. 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. Visibility in the lake's water is usually measured as a matter of a few inches.
Secondary purpose
The lake also serves as a gravity-fed source of non-potable, fire-fighting water for the local neighborhood should San Francisco's main and backup fire-fighting water supply systems ever fail, the lake water can be tapped through three green and blue, color-coded hydrants located on Fulton Street on the south side of the intersections of 30th, 34th and 36th Avenues.
Plumbing
The water in Spreckels Lake is a murky, algae-laden, non-potable mix of mainly ground water from the Park's deep wells and some surface water drained from Blue Heron Lake, not, as commonly believed, reclaimed water. The drainage from Blue Heron Lake enters the lake via a five or six-inch pipe from under the lake's normal surface level at the far eastern end of the lake and is mainly used to keep a stable water level for Spreckels Lake and has a flow of about 120 gallons a minute when fully opened. A second, smaller inlet beneath the surface on the south shore near JFK Drive allows large volumes of groundwater to be pumped directly into the Lake from the Park's high-pressure pumping station.
In normal circumstances, the water exits the lake via an overflow-style drain in the extreme western end of the lake near the Concrete Turtle in the area known to the model yacht club members as "Turtle Cove."
When the lake is being drained, a pair of grated, submerged drains in Turtle Cove and a single open drain about 15 feet out from the lake's north shore lead to the Fulton St. hydrants mentioned previously. This gravity-fed system will empty about half the lake's water over about a five-day period before the level drops enough to expose the drains. If work requires the lake to be lowered further still, SF Rec and Parks will bring in gasoline powered pumps.
SF Rec. and Parks has endeavored when possible to leave enough water in the deeper areas of the east end of the lake so even with evaporation, the larger fish and turtles that populate the lake will survive the experience.
The clubhouses
Also part of the Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility is the SFMYC's second and current clubhouse which serves as meeting hall, storage facility, workshop and library. It stands on the western side of 36th Avenue at the intersection of 36th Avenue and John F. Kennedy Drive. The structure cost $15,719 ($212,035 US 2015 Dollars) and was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) starting in 1937 and completed by 1939. 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 WPA, upon completion of the building, deeded it in perpetuity via charter to the Model Yacht Club.
The structure's red-tiled roof and concrete building with wooden, high-ceilinged interior reflects the WPA-era fusion of Mission Revival and Craftsman-style architectures that matches other buildings in the area including the Police and Public Stables across JFK Drive to the south.
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"Model Yachts and Footsore Sailors" SF CALL Newspaper, Sunday October 6, 1912 with a budget of $16,000Municipal Journal and Engineer, Volume May 26, 26, 1909, p. 960 in 1909 and served the club until they moved to their current building in 1938.
The clubhouse is open to the public on a request basis or if accompanied by a key-holding member of the model yacht club.
There are exterior entrance washrooms, men's on the north side of the building and women's on the south until 7 pm local time.
Model boaters move to Spreckels Lake
Model yachting, in a more organized sense, seems to have reached the San Francisco Bay Area sometime during or after the early to mid-1870s. 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) 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.
Model boaters were among the first people to take advantage of the newly opened Blue Heron Lake in 1893 as a venue for their models. Less than a decade later in 1902 the model yachtsmen, represented by the San Francisco Model Yacht Club (formed 1892), citing crowded conditions and consequent friction at Blue Heron Lake, petitioned the Parks Commission, of which Adolf B. Spreckels, was part, to create a "model yachting lake" within Golden Gate Park pointing to the model boating facilities found in European and East Coast parks where model boat racing competitions drew large crowds.
The San Francisco Model Yacht Club moved from Blue Heron Lake to its new home on Spreckels Lake even before the lake opened, immediately setting up an 1800-foot, two-length race course still in use today and holding its first racing event there on Sunday, February 28, 1904, as soon as the only partially filled Lake contained the minimum four feet of water required to successfully float and race their boats. 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."Yachts Will Sail On Spreckels Lake" - San Francisco Call, Volume 95, Number 68, Saturday, February 6, 1904 Spreckels Lake would officially open 28 days later on Sunday, March 20, 1904, when the club also held its first opening day regatta on the lake.