Diablo Lake
Interesting facts
- Diablo Dam held the title of world's tallest dam only briefly, until Oregon's Owyhee Dam was completed in 1932.
- Although the dam was finished in 1930, the Great Depression delayed its powerhouse, so it sent no electricity to Seattle until 1936.
- From 1928 until the Second World War, Seattle City Light ran tours by steam train to the dam, an incline lift to its crest and a boat across the lake.
- More than 100,000 people had taken the Skagit Project tours by 1941, staying overnight in company dormitories at Newhalem.
- The granite walls of Diablo Canyon rise about 160 feet straight up from the river, which made the narrow gorge an ideal dam site.
- The reservoir holds about 90,000 acre-feet of water, roughly 111 million cubic metres.
- The dam and its original power plant were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
- Rainbow, coastal cutthroat, brook and bull trout all live in the lake.
- The Skagit project began in 1917 under Seattle's lighting superintendent James D. Ross, whose name was later given to Ross Dam just upstream.
Why it is worth it
Diablo Lake is the most vividly coloured stretch of water in the North Cascades: a reservoir on the upper Skagit River in Washington whose surface glows a milky turquoise against dark forest and grey granite. The colour comes from the glaciers high on the surrounding peaks. As they grind over bedrock they produce a fine powder known as glacial flour, and meltwater streams carry it into the lake, where the suspended particles scatter sunlight. The effect is strongest on bright days in high summer, when melting is at its peak.
The lake is about 4.5 miles long and up to 390 feet deep, and sits at around 1,200 feet above sea level between Ross Lake upstream and Gorge Lake downstream. It was created by Diablo Dam, a 389-foot concrete arch-gravity dam built by Seattle City Light between 1927 and 1930 in a narrow granite gorge whose walls were less than 100 feet apart; at completion it was the tallest dam in the world. The dam is one of three on the upper Skagit that make up the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project, which supplies Seattle with power, and the small company town of Diablo was built to house its workers.
The classic view is from the Diablo Lake Overlook on the North Cascades Highway, where the lake's long arms open beneath a ring of summits: Colonial Peak and Pyramid Peak rise steeply above the Thunder Arm to the south, with Davis Peak and Jack Mountain on the skyline. Morning cloud often hangs on Colonial and Pyramid, and the light on the water tends to be best around midday. The lake lies within Ross Lake National Recreation Area, part of the North Cascades National Park complex, and the Diablo Lake Trail follows its shore for a moderately strenuous 7.6-mile round trip.
Getting there
Diablo Lake lies on State Route 20, the North Cascades Highway; the overlook is at milepost 131.7. The nearest sizeable town on the US side is Arlington, about 93 km away in a straight line, and the nearest US airport is Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), about 124 km away; from the west, the highway climbs up the Skagit valley to the lake. The nearest town and airport in a straight line are across the border in British Columbia — Abbotsford International Airport (YXX) is about 97 km away — but there is no direct road across the mountains.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Diablo Lake is a reservoir in the North Cascade mountains of northern Washington state, United States. Created by Diablo Dam, the lake is located between Ross Lake and Gorge Lake on the Skagit River at an elevation of 1,201 feet (366 m) above sea level. Diablo Lake is part of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project and managed by Seattle City Light.
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