L.A.’s Outback : Quail Lake : The elegant Kinsey mansion reminds one of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ but a commercial project may uproot the wildflowers.

A few miles north of Sandberg lies Quail Lake, a 197-acre pond resting on the San Andreas Fault just east of Gorman.

Before it was incorporated into the California Aqueduct system by the state Department of Water Resources, the lake was fed by rains and would regularly dry out in summer.

The aqueduct enters the lake from the north and exits on the south. Jerry Reynolds, a tour guide with the department, said that the particular design protects the aqueduct from earthquakes. If the fault moves, it does so under the lake, not under pipes or an artificial channel.

The most striking feature in Quail Lake is a large Georgian-style mansion built by George Kinsey, a developer who is the namesake of the George Kinsey Auditorium in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles.

With its eight thick columns and elegant lines, the mansion looks like something out of “Gone With the Wind,” and locals love to tell you it was a set in the epic movie.

It wasn’t. Farmer Bill Barnes said it was built around 1946, seven years after the movie’s debut. Barnes, 68, should know.

“You see all those columns?” he asked a visitor. “I sanded those by hand.” Barnes said he hates to destroy the “Gone With the Wind” myth. “Makes a good story,” he conceded.

Drastic changes may soon come to Quail Lake. A company has proposed building a 360,000-square-foot commercial center nearby that would include a retail factory outlet, restaurants and a motel. The complex could employ 900 workers.

“When that happens,” Spahn said, “all gee-whiz will break out here.”

That thought saddens her. Speaking from the porch of the old Sandberg brothel, she looked out at the desert below. Although sandy now, “it’s like somebody went crazy with a paintbrush” when the spring flowers bloom.

“One day you people are going to look out there and it will be all homes,” she said.