Amid rumors of dead men and whispers of untold depths lies Palmdale's "Bottomless Lake". Local's know it's there and yet many of us haven't the slightest idea how this strange body of water came to be on the east side of Sierra Highway, just south of Avenue S.

 Local stories about this lake include those of people who were last seen swimming in the lake, strange lake monsters that emerge only to swallow large water foul, scuba teams that have "tried" to find the bottom, a place where shady characters go to dump their victims and according to the website Shdowlands Haunted Places - an online index of haunted places "{quotes}A Ghost of a fisherman has been reported to lash out, slurring viciously, ordering (people) to leave, also tales of black figures climbing into the trees and vanishing{/quotes}" have been spotted. Stories of this nature go back as far as the 1880's.

The truth about how this lake came to be is not as unusual as the rumors surrounding it, considering it's location. And for that we can thank the San Andreas fault.

The lake actually has a name: "Una Lake". Seen here in this satellite image courtesy of Google, it is what is referred to as a sag pond or rift lake; which can be formed when fault movement stretches the land causing the area between the fault strands to sink. These depressions can fill with water and form a lake; and in the bottomless lake's case, that's just what happened. In fact, Lake Una is not the only sag pond in Palmdale;  {mosimage}just west is the Palmdale reservoir which was also created by the same type of geological event. Palmdale reservoir is quite a bit larger and also used for recreational fishing, so more people are aware of this lake and it's history seems to be less shrouded in mystery and folklore. Further west and larger still, is yet another sag pond called Lake Elizabeth; so well known that a city was named after it, but not devoid of rumors itself. There are several rumors that say Lake Elizabeth is haunted by a bat like monster; one quote I was able to find online states that the devil himself created the lake to keep one of his pets in!  *GULP*

I'm sure we can all breath a collective sigh of relief now that the truth is out: All of these lakes were all created by seismic activity.

I apologize if I burst your bubble, but there is nothing spooky about these lakes. Well, unless you consider the ground beneath you being stretched by a force so large that it could literally break and form a large indentation in the earth spooky.

Hmm...retrofitting anyone?