Sept. 11 attacks were 22 years ago. Why is Friant Dam near Fresno still gated shut? | Opinion

I am standing on the largest concrete slab in Fresno County — 3,488 feet long, 319 feet tall and 20 feet thick — and no one else is around.

From the top of Friant Dam, so much is visible. In one direction you can see the continuation of the San Joaquin River, the start of the Friant-Kern Canal, the town of Friant and the outskirts of Fresno some 15 miles in the distance. In the other, you can see Millerton Lake (currently 54% full and rising), historic Millerton Courthouse with its boarded-up windows and the surrounding oak-studded foothills. The way forward is blocked by an imposing security fence with a sign that warns against trespassing and loitering.

Here’s what you don’t see: people. Besides the occasional dog-walker and a maintenance worker operating a skid loader near a closed visitors center that seldom gets any visitors, the place is deserted.

Things haven’t always been this way. Nor should they be in the future if the goal is an educated populace.

Opinion

“Visiting Friant Dam was an integral part of being brought up in this area,” said Kurt Smith, a Fresno native and amateur historian. “Thousands of us have vivid memories of being out there on top of this massive structure and learning about all the details.”

Agriculture in the eastern and southern San Joaquin Valley depends on irrigation water provided by Friant Dam, built between 1937 and 1942 by the Bureau of Reclamation to impound California’s second-longest river. Flood control, municipal supply and hydroelectric power are secondary priorities.

This basic understanding about our region’s hydrology should be known by everyone living in the Fresno area. And there’s no better way to do that by getting an actual visual representation.

Unfortunately, such opportunities are scarce. Tours of Friant Dam by local schools and service organizations used to be frequent occurrences. Now, besides sporadic visits organized by farming groups and civil engineering clubs, they’ve virtually disappeared.

“We haven’t seen any school buses up here in five or six years,” said Gillian Fraser, a Fresno resident who takes her two large dogs, Magnus and Atlas, on daily walks near the dam.

“It’s a really wonderful area. The fishermen know it’s here. The dog-walkers know it’s here. But that’s it.”

Tours ‘stopped’ after 9/11

To inquire why public tours have all but stopped, I emailed the Bureau of Reclamation’s public affairs officer in Sacramento. Two days later, she replied by telling me they can be arranged by calling the Friant Dam office at (559) 822-2211.

So I did. Only to have the person that picked up the phone refer me back to the PR office.

“We only give tours to special people, senators and stuff like that,” he said after a bit. “We don’t really do public tours. … After 9/11, all that stopped.”

The Sept. 11 attacks were more than 22 years ago. Since then the World Trade Center has been rebuilt and any number of national monuments and facilities, including those in Washington, D.C. and Hoover Dam, have reopened for the public to learn from and enjoy.

But here in Central California, a tentacle of our federal government can’t be bothered. Even though Friant Dam already has a visitors center with interpretive signs, picnic tables, restrooms and interesting artifacts, such as a 36-inch-diameter drilling core, taken from the granite on which the dam is constructed. Post security, unlock the gates leading from Millerton Road during daylight hours and let people in for a look-see. Terrorism should no longer be used as an excuse for not wanting to bother.

Little wonder Fresno and Clovis have a generation of young people that grow up wakeboarding on Millerton Lake while completely unaware of the San Joaquin River.

“I’m from Ireland and my husband’s from New Zealand,” Fraser said, “and we know more about this place than most Fresnans do.”

Sad but true. While we were chatting, her dogs leashed, Fraser pointed to a telephone pole sticking above the dam with a transmitter attached.

“The other day I saw a bald eagle fishing from up there,” she said.

Historic courthouse closed

About a quarter-mile the other direction, on bluff overlooking Millerton Lake and separated from Friant Dam by the sprawling, empty parking lot sits a replica of Fresno County’s first courthouse. (The original structure, built in 1867, was located in the town of Millerton that was subsequently submerged by the lake. The courthouse was dismantled and reconstructed in 1966 using mostly new materials.)

Like the dam, Millerton Courthouse is also closed to the public. Windows on all sides of the red brick building are broken or boarded up. But as bad as the outside looks, the interior is in even worse shape as the result of a December 2022 electrical fire.

“The courthouse was moved to a safe place and reconstructed because of its historical value,” Smith said. “Now all that has gone by the wayside.”

Unlike the dam, which is federally owned and managed, Millerton Courthouse is located within a state park. According to San Joaquin Sector Superintendent Kent Gresham, cost estimates to repair the fire damage exceed $800,000.

Has the money been set aside?

“The funding request for the courthouse repairs is being evaluated with the balance of all the department’s other deferred maintenance priorities,” Gresham said via email.

Doesn’t sound too promising.

Friant Dam and Millerton Courthouse are two of the most significant structures ever built in Fresno County. Today they sit behind locked gates inaccessible to the public (the dam) and in sad disrepair (the courthouse).

It would be nice to call upon our elected officials to remedy the situation. Except Friant Dam is shared between the district represented by Congressman Tom McClintock, who could care less about Fresno, and a district that has no representation on Capitol Hill whatsoever.

At the state level, Millerton Lake lies within Assemblyman Jim Patterson’s district. But as a Republican in Sacramento, Patterson’s influence is limited due to the GOP’s superminority status..