Bisbee Lake or Horse Shoe Lake or Bixley Lake or Bigsby Lake

Bowman (1873) first mentions this lake calling it Horse Shoe Lake in his report to the California Water Company shareholders page 170, para 2. In the 1880 report to shareholders of the California Water Companay, Guildersleeve (1880, Ashburner Appendix page 1A) refer to this lake as Bixley Lake. Sioli 1883  page 120 regurgitates this  same  general  report  information from both Bowman and Guildersleeve while identifying the lake as Bixley Lake which comes from the 1880 report exclusively. Obviously in the 7 years between  the reports, this lake acquired a different name which has morphed over the years into several similar sounding names including Bixley, Bisbee and Bigsby Lake. The first surveying of this area which created the original Survey Plats, was finished by  the late 1870s and used to publish maps from 1895, may have assigned the Bixley name to the lake but by 1931 it was displayed as Bisbee Lake on the 1931  and 1943 USFS Maps while the 1937 hand drawn map by Judge Johnson used by himself as a regular camper, hiker and fisherman to the Wentworth Springs area called the lake Bigsby Lake. These things change due to new information and are corrected over time. A review of the 1931, 1943 and 1949 USFS  maps show in pretty clear form why someone would have originally called this lake Horse Shoe Lake due to it's shape. The surveyor notes sometimes have clues in this regard but unfortunately the original survey plat for Loon Lake is bare as a map with just section lines and almost nothing else, not even the lake information   and there are no surveyor notes which I have been able to obtain. This has been a problem in resolving some other historical location information in the Loon Lake area as well. I might add that Bowman and many others got a number of names different or spelled differently including Gurley versus the correct Gerle during their inspections on the Divide.

With the construction of the new Loon Lake Dam in 1962, Bisbee Lake became a part of Loon Lake with it's original location along the face of what is now the Francis Fill above Francis Cow Camp on the most Western edge of Loon Lake. Thanks to Tim Green of Loon Lake for his interest in this project and to Lint Brown for his map graphics work from his book Sixteen Summers on the Ditch with a descriptive diagram of Loon Lake and it's many lakes as against Loon Lake today.

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