Lake Arrowhead

Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, California, USA. It lies within a census-designated place (CDP) by the same name. The population of the CDP was 8,934 at the 2000 census. Lake Arrowhead Village is an unincorporated community, with the Chamber of Commerce the de facto governing body. As of January 2007, Kirk Coult is the Chairman and Lewis Murray is the President/CEO of the Lake Arrowhead Communities Chamber of Commerce. The University of California, Los Angeles operates the nearby UCLA Conference Center, a full-service conference facility with lodging and meeting space. Lake Arrowhead is also home to the Ice Castle International Training Center, an Olympic quality training facility for figure skaters. For many years, Lake Arrowhead was the home of Santa's Village, "a fairyland setting where Santa's gnomes, elves and little animal friends make up a children's and grownups' paradise the year round." The tourist attraction opened in 1955 and closed 1998. The Lake Arrowhead Yacht Club began operations in 1932 and is home to over 350 members and a fleet of over 35 sailboats. As a scenic mountain resort in the San Bernardino Mountains, Lake Arrowhead's economy is almost completely supported by tourism, both by casual vacationers and part-time residents.

Despite this, full-time residents of Lake Arrowhead and surrounding mountain communities maintain a strong identity and sense of local pride. This sense of community is evidenced by local phrases used freely during conversations between residents. These include "up the hill" and "down the hill" to indicate movement or location away from or towards the mountains (as in the phrase "I'm going down the hill tomorrow to visit my mother.") Another common local word is "flatlander", always used to indicate non-residents and often used in a derogatory way to describe their ignorance of mountain life. An example might be "When will the flatlanders learn that you can't drive so fast on the ice?" While Lake Arrowhead has no official "town center", the Lake Arrowhead Village serves as the main commercial area for both locals and tourists and includes a number of factory outlets, boutiques, restaurants, and a supermarket. Lake Arrowhead is a man-made reservoir with a surface area of approximately 780 acres (3.2 km²) and a capacity of 48,000 acre feet (59,000,000 m³). The lake was originally intended to serve as part of a major waterworks project to provide irrigation water to the San Bernardino Valley, and construction of the Lake Arrowhead Dam began towards that end in 1904. However, the original project was halted due to litigation over water supplies to land owners on the desert side of the mountains. Construction of the dam was completed in 1922 by the Arrowhead Lake Company, a Los Angeles syndicate, as part of a plan to develop the area into a resort. Use of the lake is currently controlled by the Arrowhead Lake Association, which maintains the lake for the recreational use of its members. The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District withdraws water from the lake for treatment and distribution to local residents for potable use.