The dry pools and graffiti beside Interstate 15 at Newberry Springs, California, are what's left of a waterpark 20 miles from Barstow.
Bob and Dolores Byers opened a campground here in 1962 and spent two decades adding slides. New owners rebuilt the place as Rock-A-Hoola in 1998. A third operator renamed it Discovery Waterpark in 2002.
Discovery closed in 2004. Ride equipment was sold off, and the Big Bopper raft ride went to British Columbia, where it still runs.
An arson fire took the arcade in 2018. The lake bed is empty and the asking price is $11 million. No reopening date exists.
Lake Dolores opened in 1962 as a campground
Two alfalfa growers dug a lake in the Mojave.
Bob and Dolores Byers farmed flat desert land at Newberry Springs, an unincorporated corner of San Bernardino County 20 miles northeast of Barstow, California, and three irrigation wells sat under it.
By 1962 they had used that water to fill a man-made lake, and Bob named it for his wife.
A campground beside the water opened to the public in 1962.
It sat on the Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas route that became Interstate 15, an easy stop for anyone driving to Nevada.
By 1969 families were coming out from Barstow and Yermo to swim, water ski, and picnic.
8 slides down a 90-foot dirt hill
The dirt from the lake got piled into a hill 90 feet above the desert floor, with the rides on top.
Eight speed slides ran side by side down that slope, each about 150 feet long at close to 60 degrees.
Riders took the metal troughs on small inflatables, hit the flat section at the bottom, and skipped across a channel.
Two more slides were meant to be ridden standing up, and anyone still upright got launched off the end into the water.
Zip-Cord cable rides, trapeze swings off a 20-foot platform, a lazy river, and go-karts followed. The ads called it "The Fun Spot of the Desert."
Lake Dolores itself predated Wet 'n Wild in Orlando, the park usually called the first modern one, by 15 years.
Closed in the late 1980s, rebuilt as Rock-A-Hoola
The strong years ran from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s. The weak spot was the drive.
It was hours from the Southern California suburbs that filled other amusement parks.
The park reopened in 1987 after a redevelopment deal fell through. By 1989, it had closed again.
In August 1990, the property sold to an investment group that wanted a conventional waterpark with a 1950s theme, keeping the Lake Dolores name.
The original hill slides came out in 1995 to make room for fiberglass. Bob Byers passed away in 1996.
Rock-A-Hoola Waterpark opened on July 4, 1998, with fifties rock and roll playing through a themed entrance and the Big Bopper, promoted as the world's largest family raft ride.
Early in 1999 the owners announced a $20 million expansion.
Rock-A-Hoola was already advertising 18 new aqua attractions, and the planned RV park never opened.
Bankruptcy in January, no insurance by summer
On May 29, 1999, a 23-year-old employee named James Mason came back to the closed park for an evening cleanup shift and asked a coworker to switch on the Doo Wop Super Drop.
He rode it before the runout lane had filled enough to slow him down. He hit the dam at the end and was left paraplegic.
A jury put 52 percent of the fault on the company and awarded $4.4 million.
The debt had been building separately.
Lake Dolores Group filed for Chapter 11 in January 2000, and that summer the park closed because it couldn't get liability insurance.
In August the case became a Chapter 7 liquidation and the property went back to Dolores Byers.
Discovery reopens on weekends, then stops
Dolores Byers sold the place in September 2001 to an investment group from the City of Industry, and she passed away the following month.
The new owners put $400,000 into renovations and reopened in May 2002 as Discovery Waterpark, running the same slides and concrete without the theme.
Discovery never reached a full season.
It ran weekends through 2002 and 2003, opened on and off during the summer of 2004, and then shut for the last time.
A 2003 plan to turn the property into a youth sports camp went nowhere. The 2004 season was the last time anyone paid to get in.
Skaters, a listening party, and an arson fire
The empty park found work as scenery.
In 2008 Rob Dyrdek skated the basins for an MTV episode with Christopher "Big Black" Boykin and friends, back when the slide towers were still standing.
Kilian Martin and Brett Novak shot the 2012 short film "Altered Route" on the dry surfaces of the lazy river.
After a trail of clues, Boards of Canada drew 100 fans into the desert on May 27, 2013, for a listening event.
The hardware was leaving at the same time.
The Big Bopper was shipped to Cultus Lake Waterpark in British Columbia, where it still runs as Colossal Canyon.
In 2018 an arson fire destroyed the arcade and the Lazy River Cafe.
What $11 million buys in the desert now
The current owner bought the property in February 2013 for $1.3 million.
The old permit had expired and the zoning no longer allowed a waterpark, so a new county entitlement had to come first.
That took seven years.
On March 24, 2020, San Bernardino County approved a five-phase project on 267.4 acres: refill the 22-acre lake, add 224 RV spaces, rebuild 41 acres of waterpark, and finish with commercial buildings by 2026.
The lake stayed dry and none of the phases were built.
The land has been listed on and off at $11 million since August 2021, sold on its Highway Commercial zoning and 455 acre-feet of lake water rights.
Lake Dolores has been closed 22 years, longer than Rock-A-Hoola and Discovery lasted put together.
Photographers and skaters still drive out to dry concrete, graffiti, foundations, and no rides left to restart.
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