Skip to main content

Pardee Dam Road

Pardee Dam is a 358-foot-high concrete structure located near Campo Seco at the Calaveras County and Amador County Line.  Pardee Dam impounds the Mokelumne River which forms the namesake Pardee Reservoir.  Pardee Dam was completed during 1929 and is part of the East Bay Municipal Utility District.  Pardee Dam is accessed by the namesake Pardee Dam Road which crosses the structure via the one-lane road seen as the blog cover photo.  




Part 1; the history of Pardee Dam Road

The closest community to Pardee Dam is that of Campo Seco on the Calaveras County side of the Mokelumne River.  Campo Seco was founded in 1850 by Mexican Miners who worked placer claims in Oregon Gulch during the height of the California Gold Rush.  Campo Seco would reach a population of about three hundred by 1860 spurred by the numerous mining claims in the area.  Main Street of Campo Seco flowed directly into the Campo Seco Turnpike which had been authorized by the California Legislature as an early franchise toll road.  Campo Seco Turnpike would serve as the primary highway to Mokelumne Hill.  Much of the history of Campo Seco can be found on CalaverasHistory.org here.

Campo Seco and Campo Seco Turnpike can be seen connecting to Mokelumne Hill on the 1857 Britton & Rey's Map of California.  


Campo Seco would go through periods of boom and decline through the remainder of the 19th Century.  The mines around Campo Seco and the Mokelumne River would largely remain active through the duration of World War I via the fortunes of the Penn Mine.  The Penn Mine would shutter in 1919 which led to a significant economic decline in Campo Seco.  Campo Seco and the Campo Seco Turnpike can be seen in detail on the 1914 C.F. Weber Map of Calaveras County.  


One of the last booms in Campo Seco came when the East Bay Municipal Utility District began construction of Pardee Dam during July 1927.  Pardee Dam as noted above is a 358-foot-high concrete structure which impounds the Mokelumne River to form the Pardee Reservoir.  Pardee Dam was named in honor of George Pardee who was once governor of California, mayor of Oakland and president of the East Bay Municipal Utility District.  Pardee Dam was completed by 1929 and to hydroelectric power operations on June 23.  Pardee Dam included a new roadway which crossed the top of the dam structure.  The completed Pardee Dam can be seen below in the Calaveras County Historical Society photo. 


The construction of Pardee Dam seemingly may have brought state interests to the area around Campo Seco.  A portion of the Campo Seco Parkway immediately east of Campo Seco to Mokelumne Hill was adopted as an extension of Legislative Route Number 5 during 1933.  The extension of Legislative Route Number 5 to Mokelumne Hill was assigned as part of California State Route 8 during August 1934.  Early California State Route 8 on Campo Seco Parkway can be seen on the 1935 Division of Highways Map of Calaveras County.  Pardee Dam Road can be seen branching north from California State Route 8 near Valley Springs.  


Part 2; a drive from Campo Seco to Pardee Dam via Pardee Dam Road

Following a final mining boom during World War II when the Penn Mine reopened in 1943.  The Penn Mine would remain sporadically worked until 1959 which led to the final decline of Campo Seco.  Despite a trace location population Campo Seco resembles a true ghost town as the ruins of numerous commercial buildings can be seen along Campo Seco Road.  














A view from Campo Seco Road facing north on Penn Mine Road.  

From the ruins of Campo Seco, the route to Pardee Dam Road is a short distance east via Campo Seco Road.  Pardee Dam Road in Calaveras County is co-signed as Sandretto Road.  





Pardee Dam Road continues northward and crosses the southern spillway of Pardee Dam as a single lane.  















Pardee Dam Road briefly expands to two-lanes before becoming a single lane at Pardee Dam.  Traffic over Pardee Dam is managed via traffic-light due to the obstructed sightline distance over the 1,337-foot length of the structure.  Midway through Pardee Dam the route of Pardee Dam Road crosses into Amador County.  

































Pardee Dam Road continues northward and passes by a vista of the Pardee Dam Reservoir.  Pardee Dam Reservoir has a 210,000-acre feet capacity.  From the Pardee Dam Reservoir much of the Sierra Nevada Foothills of Calaveras and Amador Counties can be observed. 












Pardee Dam Road continues north from the vista point and terminates at Stony Creek Road. 





Comments

Anonymous said…
Does anyone know if a small rv can travel through the narrowed one lane portion (part that goes over the actual dam)? We were there and weren't quite sure how wide it was (first time out with our van) and weren't brave enough to try.
Challenger Tom said…
There isn’t a width prohibition. You would be fine if you follow the one-way traffic signals.

Popular posts from this blog

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po