• Bob Byers and his wife Dolores bought 320 acres of desert land in California’s Mojave Desert in 1953. The land was barely suitable for cattle ranching and alfalfa farming. Bob Byers drew water from the underground aquifer for his cattle and crops.
• Byers lost 50 acres of their property when I-15 was completed, connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas and bringing much traffic. Then, in 1963, cattle prices bottomed out.
• Bob Byers created an artificial lake from springs in the area, so his family members could swim. Then he wondered if he could make a little money by charging other people to swim. Bob named it Lake Dolores after his wife, and it was opened to the public in 1962.
• Byers kept adding new attractions: a campground, waterslides, ziplines, high diving boards, a giant trapeze, and more. Water that once went for irrigating alfalfa now created three lakes: one for swimming, one for boating, and one for fishing. Admission was 50 cents in 1969 and increased to $1.50.
• Byers added a lazy river, bumper boats, go-carts, a restaurant, an arcade, and motocross trails.
• Eventually there were seven lakes. Attendance peaked in the mid-1970s and 1980s. Lake Dolores is considered to be the country’s first waterpark.
• Then, there was a gasoline crisis in 1979. Business dropped off. There was little supervision and few rules. With federal safety standards tightening, Bob Byers closed the park in 1989 and put it up for sale.
• It was purchased in 1990 by a group of investors called Lake Dolores Group LLC. The revamped park opened on the 4th of July, 1998, as Rock-a-Hoola with a rock and roll theme and completely new features. It attracted crowds of a thousand people per day.
• The park suffered from financial problems, not only because revenue raised was plowed back into expanding, but also because one investor made off with millions.
• The final blow came on May 29, 1999. The park closed at the end of the day as usual. Water to the waterslides was turned off. An hour later, 23-year-old pool tech James Mason arrived early for his evening shift. He asked a buddy to turn the water back on to the DooWop Slide so he could go down.
• Each slide had a reservoir pool at the end to catch riders and stop their slide. This pool emptied out when the water was turned off to the DooWop Slide. Mason knew this but thought if the water was turned on when he began climbing the staircase to the top of the slide, enough water would have collected at the bottom to cushion his landing. Unfortunately, he was mistaken. The collision left him a quadriplegic.
• Mason tried to collect worker’s comp, claiming that he had been testing the equipment as part of his job, but the park owners argued in court that he had been off the clock. In the end, the court awarded Mason $4.4 million. At the time, the company was already $3 million in debt, and this judgment was the final nail in the coffin. They declared bankruptcy and closed the park after just three seasons in business.
• With Bob Byers now deceased, Dolores Byers regained the property by default. She sold it again in 2002 to a new group of investors and died shortly afterwards. Renamed the Discovery Water Park, it closed in 2004.
• In March of 2020, the San Bernadino County Board of Supervisors announced a five-year plan to bring the derelict park back to life. The plans were never instigated. Long abandoned, the site serves as a backdrop for apocalyptic TV shows.
