The Big Drain Ends for Lake Arrowhead

For years, drought muffled the whir of motorboats zipping across Lake Arrowhead, and Rob Perrin watched his dock business sink with the water level.

Perrin thought it would take years for the lake to recover from the precipitous drought, which brought the water level to 21 feet below capacity.

But after heavy rains pounded the San Bernardino Mountains resort town in January, the private lake was brimming within a few months. It was so full that floodgates had to be opened on Willow Creek, sending lake water splashing downstream.

Owners of the quaint cottages and grand chateaux that ring the picturesque lake had moved their docks to meet Arrowhead’s receding shore, and are now finding them partly submerged. The jagged rocks and tiny islands that poked through the surface, creating a menacing obstacle course for boaters, vanished like a bad dream.

“Everything is just where it belongs,” Perrin said. “It’s awesome.”

Perrin, owner of Kiwi Docks Inc., and his employees would be “twiddling our thumbs” during a normal spring. Now with hundreds of docks that rotted in the sun when Arrowhead’s waterline crept far off the old shoreline, Perrin has had to triple his staff to 12.

“We’ve had ups and downs, but nothing like this before,” said longtime employee Craig Hunter as he scanned the shoreline from the middle of the lake on a barge with a new dock in tow, ready to be delivered. “It was all trees and rocks and dirt.”

Lake Arrowhead’s popular fireworks show, which has been canceled for years because of the drought-induced fire danger in the mountains, will be back on Fourth of July weekend, said Walt Sweet, president of the Arrowhead Lake Assn., which regulates recreation on the lake.

“It’s one of the highlights of our year up here,” he said. “The lake is covered with boats, and the display of lights is almost as amazing as the fireworks.”

Even during the height of the summer, Sweet said, the number of boats on the water had dwindled and more and more homeowners were stowing their vessels.

Before the drought, the association typically issued 2,200 boat registrations each year. Over the last few years fewer than 1,500 permits were issued annually, Sweet said. The association is now seeing long-absent boat owners lining up.

“People are excited about being able to use the lake again,” he said. “Our office has been busy trying to keep up.”

New homeowners Dave and Teri Steinberg were pleasantly surprised by the lake’s speedy resurrection. The couple bought their cozy lakeside vacation home for $177,000 shortly after they were married last May, and they had become accustomed to its barren shores.

“It’s amazing,” Teri Steinberg said recently as her husband loaded fishing gear and helped guests into their motorboat on the lake. “I’ve never seen it like this. We were anticipating it would take years.”

The Steinbergs have a home in Cerritos, closer to Dave Steinberg’s ice making business. They spend two or three days every other week at the two-bedroom home on Lake Arrowhead’s southeast shore.

Many business owners in Lake Arrowhead weathered the drought in good shape, said Lewis Murray, Lake Arrowhead’s Chamber of Commerce spokesman.

Merchants were worried that the rapid succession of natural disasters -- a bark-beetle infestation that killed thousands of trees in the mountain communities; the drought; and the deadly 2003 wildfires -- would also mean disaster for tourism and the local economy.

“We were waiting for the locusts, because we’ve had just about everything else,” he said.

To counter those problems, the chamber launched a marketing campaign to let Southern California tourists know that most of the Lake Arrowhead area escaped the wrath of the fires and that the lake, although lower than normal, was still a fun place to be, Murray said.

“Even with the lake low, it’s still a beautiful place, the jewel of Southern California,” he said.

Sales at Lake Arrowhead Village were up 8% in 2003, said Leslie McLellan, village marketing director.

“We had a record year,” she said. “The group that did not come to Lake Arrowhead during the drought were the second-home owners. Why come if you can’t use your dock? That is the one segment where we suffered.”

The marketing campaign did little to help businesses that rely on boating and other lake recreation, said Barry Lieberman, president of Hardin Marine Arrowhead. Only Arrowhead residents who live at or near the lake are allowed on the water.

“We don’t survive by the tourists,” he said. “The property owners are the ones that drive our business.”

Hardin Marine flourishes or struggles often at the whim of Mother Nature, Lieberman said. Things are beginning to look up. In his office overlooking the newly replenished lake, Lieberman is greeted every morning by a desk piled with sales slips.

“One of our customers called and said to quit doing the rain dance,” he said.

Merchants at Lake Arrowhead Village are equally upbeat. April and May are typically slow months, but store owners are starting to see tourists creep back and are gearing up for a summer tourism comeback, said Sondra Hughes, owner of the boutique Sondra’s Wild Sophistication.

“It’s a miracle. We are exploding with glee. It’s like you take a breath and wonder what’s next,” said Hughes, who also is president of the local merchants association. “Hopefully, no more disastrous things.”

Hughes, who has lived in Lake Arrowhead almost 30 years, stored her boat two years ago after it hit an island. She was eager to put it back out this year. Despite the rough times, Hughes said, she is staying put.

“The glass is half full,” she said. “I believe that it isn’t greener anywhere else.”