Edgar’s Sunland Plunge

Edgar’s “ahooga” horn sounded as he passed the children he encountered. Rounding the corner on Sherman Grove toward the canning factory he was almost home. After an extended auto journey through the Yosemite Valley and northern California, Edgar Fremont Lancaster had returned to Sunland with new ideas.

Born in Corydon, Iowa in 1858, Edgar made his way west with his wife Maggie in the early 1890s. Their first home was in Pasadena on Marengo Avenue where they owned a small grocery market on the corner of Marengo and Colorado Boulevard. In about 1905, then with four children, they sold the store and moved to Sunland.

They bought acreage on Sherman Grove Avenue, just one block north of Sunland Park on the west side of the street. The purchase included a house, an orchard, enough pasture for livestock and a swamp. It was the swamp he was excited about as he returned from his journey north in July of 1925.

  After moving to Sunland, the family continued in the grocery business growing their own fruit and transporting it to Pasadena each day, a three-hour journey on the single-lane dirt road of that time. Life was difficult and upon his return home on that July afternoon in 1925, he believed he had the solution to his hardships.

  By 1925, the automobile was all the rage. The accessible price of the Model T was such that Americans had spread their wings and begun to travel like never before. On his trip through Yosemite and the surrounding areas, Edgar had come across one auto camp after another. Landowners had simply marked out their properties and charged fees for campers to park their cars and set up tents. More importantly, he noticed that the auto camps that had a plunge were always packed, booked solid. Edgar would endeavor to create his own auto camp and swimming plunge on his large lot.

  In 1915, on the advice of local community leader “Uncle” Marsh, Edgar had done some excavating on the swampy portion of his land, and it filled with water, effectively creating a small reservoir to water his garden and fruit trees. Now he planned a much grander excavation.

  Without the benefit of bulldozers or other mechanical diggers, locals gathered together with shovels to help Edgar move the dirt to the northern edge of his property where the elevation was lowest. The hole filled with water to a depth of four feet and eventually covered two acres behind the Lancasters’ home. The plunge was complete and became known as Lancaster’s Lake.

  Edgar lost no time in adding amenities to his new auto camp. In addition to camping spots several quaint cabins were built, a playground for children with swings and merry-go-rounds was included and a picnic area and pavilion with a snack shop emerged. Edgar also carved numerous animals from large logs and placed them about the property. Whether a horse, a pig, an elephant or a camel, most had leather ears, a rope tail and a saddle for the kids to climb up on.

  It wasn’t long before the water became brackish and Edgar was forced to discontinue the swimming but boating, fishing and catching polliwogs at Lancaster Lake remained popular. Edgar built all of his own boats and hand-painted a name on each toward the bow. Most were named after his grandchildren, such as Eldora, Harold and Mary Lu.

  The history of Lancaster’s Lake, Sunland’s plunge, and auto camp came to an end about 1950. The underground aquifer bringing water so close to the surface was diminished by several factors over the years. The lake dried up and was filled in. Edgar died in 1951 at the age of 93; Maggie had passed away years earlier.

  The old Lancaster’s Lake property today is the Sherman Grove Mobile Home Park and the Sunland Mobile Home Park at 10711 & 10799 Sherman Grove Avenue in Sunland.