NPS Withdrawal: 1957
Transferred to the State of California in 1957.
National Parks Traveler
The Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that built the dam and reservoir system turned the management of its recreational resources over to the National Park Service through an administrative agreement signed on May 22, 1945. The Millerton Lake Recreation Area was now part of the National Park System. But it really shouldn’t have been, and the Park Service did not rest easy with that knowledge. This is a park that would be gotten rid of at the very first good opportunity.
That happened on November 1, 1957 when the NPS used a lease arrangement to transfer its recreation management responsibilities for Millerton Lake to the state of California. Had you been a fly on the wall in the NPS inner sanctum, you might very well have heard sighs of relief and a muttered (maybe shouted?) “good riddance.”
This is certainly not to say that Millerton Lake SRA lacks recreational appeal – far from it. It is rather to say that Millerton Lake was not, is not, and never will be of national park caliber.