For 30 or 40 years, the Chain of Lakes at the western end of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has been missing its crucial center link.
Called simply Middle Lake, it is part of the three-lake chain dug out in 1899 and still the only bodies of water in the park to be filled by a natural source, an underlying aquifer.
It took about a century for Middle Lake to give way to seepage, silt, invasive species, algae blooms, and drought until it finally dried up and became a wildland for kids to build forts on.
But it has now been reclaimed in a $7.1 million capital project that has created a glistening blue lake 7-feet deep with a clay bottom dropping down another 18 inches to ensure the water stays there.