Old Unfaithful : Lake Hughes: The periodic rise and fall of the waters leave residents’ spirits--and the area’s economy--low in dry years.

Lake Hughes is gone.

The mountain hamlet of the same name lives on, but drought has shriveled its namesake to a shallow puddle.

Old-timers there are saddened by the lake’s demise, but not surprised.

The lake has disappeared before.

“It comes and goes,” said Bob Marshall, whose great-great-grandfather homesteaded a ranch in Lake Hughes in 1885.

About every 10 years, when a drought hits and the rains stop, the 135-acre lake vanishes. For Marshall, 40, and others who have spent their lives in the town, the rise and fall of their lake is as predictable as winter snow and summer sun. That cycle has shaped the community’s character, fueling the economy in wet years, prompting decline in dry ones. It continues to do so.

Jeff Dehaas, however, is taking the drought in stride. He knows all about the drought. It’s in his back yard.

In times of plenty, the cool waters of Lake Hughes almost lap against the rock wall defending the yard behind Dehaas’ powder-blue clapboard house. But these days the lake lies parched and thirsty, the nearest water 50 yards from the rock wall.

“It’s a shame,” Dehaas said. His hands on a shovel, Dehaas paused from clearing debris beached on the exposed lake bed. “We’re cleaning it up now that the lake is down. It was completely dry until the last rain.”

So far Dehaas has removed garbage and parts of sunken boats. “There used to be a car in there,” he said.

As Dehaas spoke, John Damann, a fire protection specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, stopped by to talk. The lake has disappeared four times in his lifetime, he said.

In his boyhood, the smooth lake bed made a fine playground. “I used to play baseball out there,” Damann, 40, said. Elizabeth Lake, larger and to the east of Lake Hughes, traditionally dries out before its smaller cousin, but for some reason is still rather full, he said.

Damann and Dehaas looked out at the puddle, which formed after two inches of December rain replenished the underground springs feeding the lake. It would take about 10 inches of rain to return the lake to normal levels, Damann said.

Dehaas could sail his boat across the lake last winter, but by summer’s end the water had receded, leaving lumpy white cakes of alkaline sediment along the old shoreline. Herons and egrets descended on the lake, easily catching blue gills and catfish in the shallow water.

After scores of fish and plants began to die from lack of oxygen, boys from a nearby probation camp were brought in to haul out the mess. “It smelled pretty bad,” Marshall recalled.

When dead fish and plants rose to the surface during past droughts, the Indians used to say the “lake turned upside down,” Damann said. They were familiar with the lake’s cycle of death and rebirth.

The modern towns of Lake Hughes and its sister community, Elizabeth Lake, are 58 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, perched 3,250 feet above sea level in the Angeles National Forest.

Now with a combined population of 2,500, the unincorporated communities were known for decades as vacation spots.

“When I was a child, it was a resort town,” Marshall said. But the character of the communities changed in the 1960s, switched from vacation hideaways to homey communities with year-round populations. “The lakes went dry. That ended the tourism,” Marshall said.

Lake Hughes’ latest vanishing act has taken on a peculiar irony because a sewer system was installed just last September in hopes of saving the lake.

During the 1980s, Los Angeles County health officials determined that runoff from septic tanks had contaminated the lake, creating a health hazard.

The runoff encouraged algae to grow out of control and a thick green ooze covered the lake. “It looked like split pea soup,” Marshall said. Officials warned that swimmers and anglers could contract, among other things, hepatitis A, salmonella and diarrhea from the water.

In 1988, after years of debate that polarized the town, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered the construction of a $4.2-million sewage system, using state, federal and local funds.

Opponents said the sewer would encourage growth and destroy the town’s country atmosphere. But proponents of the sewer system, such as Marshall, feared the county would condemn lakeside properties as health hazards unless the problem was corrected.

Marshall noted that the cost of the sewer service is minimal, only $34 a month per household. And when the lake fills up, it should be clean once more, he said.

But some residents still grouse about the sewer. A common joke heard in town these days: “They put in the sewer and the lake went dry.”

Longtime residents are confident that the lake will fill once more. Marshall recalled a storm which left part of the family ranch underwater. “I lost seven acres of land in 1969,” he said.

Damann claimed that the storm of ’69 produced a remarkable phenomenon at a bar, now gone, which was located on a sliver of land separating Lake Hughes from Lake Munz, another small lake in the area. When the doors were open, he said, the high water ran straight through the bar from Munz to Hughes.

“We’d drink beer and watch the fish go by,” he said. Damann, with a straight face, swears the story is true.

Judy Sorensen isn’t so sure. “That might be a fish story,” she said skeptically.

Sorensen and her husband, Ed, moved to Lake Hughes from Frazier Park four years ago, remodeling an old lakeside cabin on the eastern shore. “We came for the lake,” she said.

Sorensen had heard of the lake’s fickle nature, but her husband had not. “My husband wants to move now,” said Sorensen.

The drought has produced many surprises for residents cleaning the lake bed, she said. “A guy next door was raking and found a hand grenade--had the pin in it and everything.” Authorities determined the grenade was a dud.

Sorensen, a motel manager and real estate agent, wants to stay at Lake Hughes. When it’s full, the lake is beautiful, she said. Besides, it would be difficult to move now because the dry lake has depressed an already slumping real estate market, she said.

But one of her neighbors recently left town, saying that when the water returns, he will too. Others say that, the lake’s cycle notwithstanding, the current drought is so severe that Lake Hughes may not recover for some time.

Behind Sorensen, several yards offshore, a small yellow houseboat sat high and dry. “I was going to buy a houseboat for my husband,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t.”