{"id":456185,"date":"2026-09-07T12:04:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T12:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/456185\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T12:04:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T12:04:35","slug":"why-a-dam-covered-the-former-town-of-monticello-calif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/456185\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a dam covered the former town of Monticello, Calif."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Monticello\u2019s<\/p>\n

Monticello\u2019s homes are burned and razed to make way for Lake Berryessa in 1956.<\/p>\n

Pirkle Jones<\/p>\n

Patrick Scribner has only limited memories of what, for generations, was home to his ancestors.<\/p>\n

His family lived in Monticello, a former ranching community of around 300 people in Napa County that dated to the mid-19th century. It was razed in 1956 and submerged after the construction of Monticello Dam to create Lake Berryessa. Today the lake provides water for much of Solano County.<\/a><\/p>\n

Scribner was born in 1952 in Esparto, not long after his immediate family left Monticello. He remembered going to his grandparents\u2019 Grecian Revival home, the Scribner Mansion, as a young child. His father didn\u2019t offer hints as to where the foundations of the house wound up under the lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never knew where the house was and where the buildings were and he would never speak of it,\u201d Scribner said. \u201cIt was that painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The The town of Monticello on the banks of Putah Creek in 1956. PIRKLE JONES via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

Roughly 70 years on from the submersion of Monticello and the Berryessa Valley, the former town is seeing new life online. UC Santa Cruz recently published an archive of 3,200 pictures made by groundbreaking photographer Dorothea Lange and Pirkle Jones. The project, titled \u201cDeath of a Valley\u201d by its creators, chronicled the final year of Monticello\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n

The images are a haunting reminder of the price of change.<\/p>\n

The town of Monticello <\/p>\n

Monticello was located on Putah Creek about 9 miles northwest of the dam that now bears its name.<\/p>\n

At that time, Highway 28 (later renamed Highway 128) ran along the floor of the southern end of the valley. <\/p>\n

Just east of the creek \u2013 which was crossed by a stone bridge built in 1896 \u2013 Monticello’s main street branched north from the highway near Gunn Ranch. <\/p>\n

Not much remains today of Monticello.\u00a0The government razed or burned its buildings to keep them from becoming underwater hazards in the lake.<\/p>\n

While foundations and roads subsumed by Lake Berryessa have resurfaced in drought, the old town largely exists in two places: Jones and Lange\u2019s photos, and the memories of the people who once called it home.<\/p>\n

\"The The main street of Monticello, including the town\u2019s general store, in 1956. DOROTHEA LANGE via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

Janice Gauthier, 82, said her family was among the last people to leave Monticello in 1956.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great time growing up in Monticello, that\u2019s all I can say,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cIt was fresh air. We had a great school and the teachers were usually husband and wife and they always became close friends with my family. In fact, they still were until they passed a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

She noted that the town had its own forestry department and community center.<\/p>\n

\"Young Young men ride a motorcycle through Monticello in 1956. PIRKLE JONES via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

George Griffin, 63, grew up in Winters, where several generations of his family have lived and where some former Monticello residents moved after the town vanished.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had people tell me that it was just as pretty, just as nice as Napa Valley. And if it hadn\u2019t got flooded, it might have been another one of those,\u201d Griffin said.<\/p>\n

Griffin described Monticello as \u201ckind of a cowboy town.\u201d It had a popular rodeo run by Scribner\u2019s family. The land was also fertile, good for vineyards or wheat when it wasn\u2019t being used for cattle. \u201cWe had the best soil anywhere,\u201d said Gauthier, whose family owned 200 acres. \u201cIt was just unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Monticello Monticello resident Buck Hannackle rides his horse during cattle roundup at the Ryan ranch in Monticello in 1956. PIRKLE JONES via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

Monticello was one of many towns or settlements lost to dam projects in the United States in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Historic settlements that were submerged by other dams near Sacramento include Mormon Island and Salmon Falls, which were subsumed around 1955 by Folsom Dam; Camanche and Lancha Plana, which were lost to Camanche Dam in 1964; and Bidwell Bar, Enterprise and Las Plumas, all displaced in 1968 by Oroville Dam.<\/p>\n

The last major dam built in California, which created New Melones Lake<\/a>, was completed almost 50 years ago. It submerged the old mining town of Melones and the original Melones dam.<\/p>\n

The proposed Sites Reservoir would inundate the small community of Sites if the controversial project<\/a> is constructed. A wildfire burned much of the town in the 1960s, but the new lake would displace 17 potentially historic residences and two cemeteries, according to the project\u2019s environmental documents.<\/a><\/p>\n

More than 300 former communities and 65,000 people across the U.S. have been displaced by dam projects, according to the website The Atlas of Drowned Towns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The The Monticello Dam under construction in 1956. PIRKLE JONES via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

\u201cI would categorize them as marginalized places, which makes them easier to displace than someplace with deeper and more politically, culturally and economically powerful roots,\u201d said Bob Reinhardt, an associate professor at Boise State who heads up the online atlas.<\/p>\n

Monticello residents resisted when the government began its efforts in the late 1940s to take land for the reservoir.<\/p>\n

Scribner\u2019s uncle, Stanford-educated mining engineer Thornton Scribner, made a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1948 in a futile bid to save the town. He suggested construction of a smaller series of dams on Putah Creek, according to his son Jim Scribner, who is 92 and lives near Oroville.<\/p>\n

In the end, it was all for naught, leaving families like Gauthier\u2019s to hold out as long as they could.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t sell,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cThey just took it and gave you what they thought it was worth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dam was completed in February 1957 at a cost of $47 million, according to The Sacramento Bee. That May, the paper wrote about road closures needed because \u201cboating and water skiing enthusiasts had been flocking to the new lake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lake Lake Berryessa forms after the town of Monticello was cleared and the Monticello Dam finished. PIRKLE JONES via UC Santa Cruz Witnessing the end of Monticello<\/p>\n

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, grew up near Monticello in Saint Helena and was about 6 when the dam was completed and the valley began to fill with water.<\/p>\n

Thompson remembers going into the valley with his father while the dam was under construction. His father parked his truck by a store and spoke with men who had heavy equipment and were working on the project.<\/p>\n

\"Workers Workers at Cook, Mackenzie and Son \u2014 Monticello\u2019s general store \u2014 in 1956. DOROTHEA LANGE via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the history of any area is important for a whole bunch of reasons,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cI think we need to honor our ancestors and have a clear understanding of what took place before we got here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson noted that he has extensively toured the potential area for Sites Reservoir, which he said could be located in his district. \u201cWhen that goes in, that\u2019s going to change the countryside,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cThere\u2019ll be bridges and roads and things of that nature under that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably for Monticello, the stone Putah Creek Bridge that dates to 1896, submerged deep under Lake Berryessa, has been visited by SCUBA divers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jones and Lange also witnessed Monticello\u2019s coda. They were commissioned by Life magazine to photograph the doomed town and surrounding valley.<\/p>\n

Lange was already famous as a photographer. She is best known for \u201cMigrant Mother<\/a>,\u201d her 1936 photo of itinerant laborer Florence Owens Thompson and her children. Jones, who was nearly 20 years younger than Lange, had studied under celebrated photographer Ansel Adams.<\/p>\n

\"Dorothea Dorothea Lange photographs a large tree that was felled as the town of Monticello was destroyed to make way for Lake Berryessa in 1956. PIRKLE JONES via UC Santa Cruz <\/p>\n

The two spent a year on the assignment. Drew Johnson, a curator for the Oakland Museum of California, which holds Lange\u2019s collection, shared Adams\u2019 description of her work ethic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said that Dorothea had a way of making you feel guilty that you weren\u2019t as committed as she was,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

For his part, Jones told the publication Art & Antiques late in his life, according to his 2009 New York Times obituary<\/a>, that he \u201calways thought of my career as a bridge between the classic photography of Ansel Adams and the documentary work of Dorothea Lange.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Life magazine passed on publishing the photos from Lange and Jones, some of the photos were published in Aperture magazine for its fall 1960 issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an extraordinary document of a moment in time and the type of growth that was happening in California at that time,\u201d said Teresa Mora, head of special collections at UC Santa Cruz, which scanned the collection several years ago and made them available online late last year.<\/p>\n

Monticello today<\/p>\n

The Monticello Public Cemetery was moved to the small Napa County community of Spanish Flat, near the banks of Lake Berryessa, ahead of the submersion of Monticello. Today the cemetery is a tribute to the former town.<\/p>\n

Generations of families stayed in the Monticello area for ranching or other purposes. Surnames like McKenzie, Adams and Scribner make frequent appearances on headstones at the roughly 600-grave cemetery, which is still allows burials of descendants of the town or people who live nearby.<\/p>\n

\"Gravestones Gravestones from the original Monticello town cemetery, relocated during construction of the Monticello Dam and Lake Berryessa in the 1950s, stand at the Monticello Public Cemetery in Spanish Flat. PAUL KITAGAKI JR. pkitagaki@sacbee.com <\/p>\n

Spanish Flat was intended to be a new version of Monticello, but it hasn\u2019t worked out that way. The area has the feel of a ghost town and shows how hard it can be to recreate a sense of place or community in a new destination. Sometimes, the magic is simply gone. Practical challenges have also confounded Spanish Flat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have infrastructure problems,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cThere was a pretty sizable housing component built on the lake and they don\u2019t have the water resources that they need for that. So utilities are real high.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson added that wildfires have burned the area in recent years, leading him to believe that rates for home insurance were unaffordable. Burnt trees dot the hillside near the cemetery.<\/p>\n

Time has reduced the number of living Monticello residents. The community went in different directions as the town\u2019s demise approached.<\/p>\n

\"Lake Lake Berryessa, created following construction of Monticello Dam in the 1950s, in July. In 1956, after relocating Monticello’s residents and removing or demolishing the town’s buildings, the federal government created the reservoir, flooding the valley and submerging the town of Monticello. PAUL KITAGAKI JR. The Sacramento Bee <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of my dad\u2019s best friends ended up going elsewhere,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cThey were farming families and they were trying to buy land someplace that they could afford with what the government gave them for what was buried or flooded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Griffin is board president of the Historical Society of Winters, located in a building that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation constructed when it built the dam. The society has a room devoted to Monticello.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing \u2026 is recognizing that the things we do for public work projects has a cost beyond the taxpayer dollars because it displaces other people,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cYou build a freeway, you displace people. You try to build high-speed rail, it displaces people. You build a lake, it displaces people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd those people had lives there and some of them for a very long time,\u201d Griffin added.<\/p>\n

Residents of the former town now gather at Monticello Public Cemetery.<\/p>\n

\"Gravestones Gravestones from the original Monticello town cemetery, relocated during construction of Monticello Dam and Lake Berryessa in the 1950s, stand at Monticello Public Cemetery in Spanish Flat. PAUL KITAGAKI JR. The Sacramento Bee <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a reunion every year, a Memorial Day there, those that are left,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cThis year, it was very sparse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gauthier serves on the board of the Monticello Public Cemetery District. So does Patrick Scribner, who was so young when Monticello was inundated with water that he doesn\u2019t remember the area beyond the visit to his grandparents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been so long I think it\u2019s kind of faded in the past,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat keeps us together are the people. So that\u2019s why I think these Memorial Day get-togethers are so important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gauthier suspected that the recent Memorial Day gathering would be the last one. But it won\u2019t be her last time in the cemetery. She has a plot to be buried there. So does Patrick Scribner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t pick any other place, to be honest with you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Photo editing and presentation by The Bee\u2019s Hannah Ruhoff and Nathaniel Levine.<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Graham Womack<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n

Graham Womack is a general assignment reporter for The Sacramento Bee. Prior to joining The Bee full-time in September 2025, he freelanced for the publication for several years. His work has won several California Journalism Awards and spurred state legislation.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monticello\u2019s homes are burned and razed to make way for Lake Berryessa in 1956. Pirkle Jones Patrick Scribner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-456185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}