Lee Lake, is a

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

created by the Lee Lake 818-002 Dam across Temescal Creek, in

Riverside County, California Riverside County is a County (United States), county located in the southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most ...

. It lies at an elevation of .

History

The large dam created a reservoir over the site of a small natural lake, called ''Lagunita'', that already existed along the course of Temescal Creek in that location in the 19th century, and appears in an 1860 Temescal Survey Map. In May, 1886 the South Riverside Land and Water Company was incorporated, and it purchased the lands of Rancho La Sierra of Bernardo Yorba, and the

Rancho Temescal Rancho Temescal was a Mexican land grant in present-day Ventura County and Los Angeles County, California given in 1843 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Francisco Lopez and José Arellanes. The word “temescal” is Spanish for "sweat bath ...

grant where the colony of South Riverside (later

Corona Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to: * Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star * Corona (beer), a Mexican beer * Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...

) was laid out. They also secured the water rights to Temescal Creek, its tributaries and Lee Lake. Dams and pipelines were built to carry the water to the colony. Rose L. Ellerbee,''History of Temescal Valley'', Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California, Volume 11, 1918 pp.18-19
/ref> By the time the U. S. Geological Survey mapped the area in 1897-98 for the Elsinore Quadrangle, California the dam and Lee Lake appear on the map. Recently it has been called ''Corona Lake'' by a fishing enterprise that operates there.Corona Lake
from fishinglakes.com accessed July 1, 2015

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee Lake (Temescal Wash) Reservoirs in Riverside County, California Temescal Mountains Reservoirs in California Reservoirs in Southern California