 The dam survived the 1906 earthquake despite the fact that the fault runs directly under the dam.In 1895, Professor Andrew Lawson of the University of California, Berkeley, conferred the name of the lake on the earthquake fault he discovered in its vicinity.Construction of the 1868 dam would have trapped salmonids such as coho salmon ("Oncorhynchus kisutch") and coastal rainbow trout ("Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus") as both stream resident and steelhead life forms, both known to have been historically present in the San Mateo Creek watershed.