Lake Elsinore, originally named Laguna Grande by the Spanish explorers, renamed for the town Lake Elsinore, California established on its northeastern shore April 9, 1888.
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Lake Elsinore is the largest natural freshwater lake in Southern California and is situated at the lowest point within the San Jacinto River watershed of 750 square miles (1,900 km2) at the terminus of the San Jacinto River.
Lake levels are healthy at 1,244 feet (379 m) (above sea level) with a volume of 30,000 acre·ft (37,000,000 m3)[1] that often fluctuate, although much has been done recently to prevent the lake from drying up, flooding, or becoming stagnant.
At 1,255 feet (383 m), the lake will spill into the outflow channel on its northeastern shore, known properly as Temescal Wash, flowing northwest through Temescal Canyon feeding Aberhill Creek which joins Temescal Creek, which in turn dumps into the Santa Ana River just northwest of Corona.
Lake Elsinore is the largest sag pond in the Elsinore Fault Zone.[2]
It sits in a basin bordered to the southwest and west by the Elsinore Mountains, which are a part of the larger Santa Ana Mountain Range.
Elsinore's northwestern shore rises to the foothills of the mountains and the saddle between them and the line of hills that closely enclose the lake along its northeastern shore until they decline and end short near the shore of the Aberhill Creek outlet from the lake that passes through downtown Lake Elsinore.
The lake south of the outlet lies in an open area at the mouth of the San Jacinto River, distantly bounded to the east by the Tuscany and Sedco Hills. Much of it has been cut off from the lake and river by a flood control levee, and that only permits the isolated section to fill after an extremely large rainfall event. This Lake Elsinore basin is the northwestern extremity of the Temecula Valley cut off from its Santa Margarita River watershed by a slight ridge running across the valley south of the lake between the Sedco Hills and the mountains to the west.