Monday, October 3, 2016

One more thought about Lake Wohlford

 

In my reminiscence a few weeks back, I neglected an important detail.  There was a castle on a hill overlooking the lake.  It wasn’t really a castle of course, but that description fit our imaginations.  It was an old hand quarried stone foundation of what was to be a great house for Earl and Ava, the owners of the Lake Wolford Resort.  I added it to the map of the area I sent out earlier.  It was an easy walk and climb from our trailer.  It was already an abandoned project by the time we were there as kids in the 1950s.

 

Lake Wohlford map

 

(We were there for the bulldozing of the mountain top to make an airport.  The story was he just went up and bulldozed out a runway and was bummed when he found out he needed to get permits, and had to wait way too long (like maybe two years) for the dirt to settle before he could pave it to complete the project.)

 

Having remembered Earl and Ava’s names, I googled Lake Wohlford again and found this article from a San Diego paper:

 

http://hiddensandiego.net/lake-wohlford-lookout.php

 

And this one from the Los Angeles Times:

 

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-16/sports/sp-1874_1_lake-wohlford-cafe

 

Turning the remains of the foundation into a castle may be the stuff of childhood fantasies, but apparently Earl Losch never outgrew his childhood illusions and was not dissuaded by the challenges of an impossible task.

 

(These are not my photos.  I scrounged them from the web.)

 

 

 

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