Lake Dolores / Rock-A-Hoola: The Abandoned Waterpark in the Mojave

FROM FAMILY LAKE TO DESERT WATERPARK\n\nBob Byers developed Lake Dolores in the late 1950s and named it for his wife. The site opened to the public in 1962 and gradually evolved from a campground and lake into a full waterpark that became familiar to travelers between Southern California and Las Vegas.\n\nTHE ROCK-A-HOOLA ERA\n\nAfter the original operation declined, investors redeveloped the property in the 1990s with a stylized Route 66 theme and the name Rock-A-Hoola. The revived park struggled financially. A serious 1999 slide accident involving an employee led to a multimillion-dollar judgment and became one of several pressures on the business. The property later reopened as Discovery Waterpark but closed permanently in 2004.\n\nAFTER CLOSURE\n\nSlides and equipment were removed or sold. The remaining pools, channels, buildings and concrete structures were repeatedly vandalized and stripped. Photographers and urban explorers turned the site into an icon of desert abandonment. Multiple redevelopment proposals were announced over the years, but the derelict landscape became more famous than the operating park had been.\n\nWHAT IS LEFT OF THE STORY\n\nLake Dolores is a modern ruin, not an ancient ghost town. Its significance comes from the speed with which a colorful roadside attraction became a skeletal landscape.\n\nSAFETY\n\nThe property has been privately controlled and posted against trespassing. ODDKNOWN does not recommend entering the site.