Parks advocates, owner share vision of restoring Schaads

By Dana M. Nichols

Record Staff Writer

January 20, 2013 12:00 AM

WEST POINT – Schaads Reservoir has fallen on hard times in the past decade or so.

An abandoned junker sits where the road dead ends at the east end of the lake, potholes and mud discourage many motorists from trying the entry road, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife no longer stocks the lake with trout.

Closed, too, are the famous campground and bar that Effie Schaad operated here starting in the late 1930s.

But parks advocates and a new property owner who bought part of the old Schaads Ranch in 2011 say they plan to restore at least some of the shine to Schaads soon.

“It seems to be an achievable goal,” said Chris Wright, the Calaveras County supervisor who represents District 2, which includes the West Point area. “We can get this thing started this year.”

What Wright and District 2 Parks Commissioner Pat McGreevy hope to do this year is to get the access road graded and graveled, install a vault toilet, and stock the lake with trout.

Part of the reason the prospects to restore Schaads are brighter now is that in 2011 retired custom home designer Floyd Cornett of Friday Harbor, Wash., purchased property that the entry road crosses.

“My wife and I are very much for this,” Cornett said during a telephone interview from his home in Washington. “We have been working with the parks and recreation people on possibly developing some hiking trails in there.”

According to former property owner Rick Schaad, fish stocking at the lake stopped more than a decade ago because of conflict over the road.

“I went ’round and ’round with Fish and (Wildlife) when I owned the property,” Rick Schaad said. “They couldn’t show me that there was a public access but they wanted me to maintain the road and keep it open.”

The informality of such arrangements in the past has often been fatal to parks in Calaveras County.

A once-popular baseball field in nearby Rail Road Flat, for example, is now closed because it is on private property and parks advocates were unable to negotiate an understanding with the owner.

Calaveras has no countywide parks department, and most parks in the county are maintained by small districts or community clubs.

According to research done by McGreevy, it was the late Effie Schaad who negotiated an agreement with the Calaveras Public Utility District, which operates the dam that makes the reservoir. That agreement still allows public recreation at the lake.

Right now, the waters of Schaads Reservoir are used only to generate electricity.

But the utility district has in the past and may again distribute drinking water from the lake, said Donna Leatherman, the general manager of the utility district.

The utility itself has no desire, however, to operate a recreation site or maintain the road, Leatherman said. In the past few years, utility district workers have been emptying the trash cans on the lake shore even though it is not the utility’s responsibility.

Leatherman mentioned that when she ran into McGreevy at a barbecue in October.

“I said it would be nice to have somebody else empty the trash cans,” she said.

McGreevy agrees, and even already has a nonprofit organization, the Sandy Gulch Park and Recreation Council, that can be mobilized to do that. His vision, however, goes far beyond picking up trash.

McGreevy also wants to ultimately create a network of foot trails around the lake, including one using the gentle grade of a former ditch that could provide wheelchair access to fishing.

Wright wants to help McGreevy to negotiate with other land owners around the lake, such as Sierra Pacific Industries and the U.S. Forest Service, to make that possible.

Cornett, too, has a vision, including reopening the campground and moving his 40-foot yacht from Puget Sound to West Point to become a guest cabin on the property.

And Cornett said he plans to move to the property to live there full time later this year.

“My main concern is to meet the needs of the local old-timers like myself that like to fish and to make it accessible,” Cornett said.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.