The story of when the world’s best divers came to Searsville Lake

Editor’s note: We were reminded of Searsville Lake’s history thanks to the Portola Valley newsletter and the town’s Historical Resources Group.

It is hard to imagine today with Searsville Lake locked away inside Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and accessible only to researchers that the same quiet waters once roared with the splashes of world-record swimmers and the crowds that came to watch them. But in the early 1920s, this man-made reservoir was one of the most exciting aquatic venues in the American West — and in 1923 and 1924, it became a proving ground for the U.S. Olympic team bound for Paris.

The couple behind it all

The story begins with two Swedish immigrants who fell in love over a diving board. Greta Johanson was the first female Olympic diving champion, winning the 10-meter tower dive event at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics — the first-year women were allowed to compete. She married Olympic teammate Ernst Brandsten, and the two taught swimming and diving first in Sweden and then in the United States.

Ernst Brandsten became Stanford’s aquatics coach and began building a powerhouse program with his wife Greta, who also became director of the newly built Roble women’s pool starting in 1916. They were, in every sense, a dynasty in the making.

In 1922, the Brandstens leased the land around Searsville Lake so they could teach water sports and run a summer camp, which they called Camp Searsville. They hauled in tons of sand to create a beach, built a boathouse, and — most importantly for what was to come — constructed a formidable high-diving facility right on the dam itself.

A tower like no other

The Brandstens constructed 16- and 32- foot-tall high diving towers at Searsville Lake — the taller one more than three times as high as a standard springboard. A three-tier diving platform was built on the dam, used for National High Diving Championships. Olympic trials for the U.S. team were also held at the resort.

Training there was not for the faint of heart. At Searsville, divers would climb a three-story ladder with missing rungs. The platforms would sway in the wind, and natural fluctuation in the lake’s water level meant divers were never quite sure how far they were diving.

Ernst Brandsten’s coaching philosophy was relentless and innovative. He believed that becoming a champion diver required 80 practice dives a day for six years. To pack more dives into practice periods divers would practice off a board into a sandpit and walk tightropes to improve their balance.

A far western tryout

In the spring of 1924, Searsville Lake hosted a critical West Coast qualifying meet for the Paris Games. Warren Kealoha and Bill Kirschbaum set world records at a “Far Western” tryout at Searsville Lake, with leading swimmers and divers from across the country descending on the Peninsula to compete. The event was part of an elaborate, multi-stage qualification process unlike anything athletes face today.

Stanford’s own Olympian

Among those who trained at Searsville and went on to Paris was a young Stanford student named Clarita Hunsberger. She was the first female Stanford athlete to travel to the Olympics, spending countless hours training in the Stanford pool and at Searsville Lake under the Brandstens’ guidance.

The Brandstens believed in her deeply. Often without access to a car, she walked the five miles each way to Searsville Lake and climbed those swaying towers again and again. She recalled going out on the springboard to find a layer of frost on it.

Her sorority paid for her train journey to reach the New York trials. Eight days later, she was aboard the USS America, setting off for France

Paris and a golden sweep

The Brandsten program arrived in Paris ready to dominate. In 1924, Al White led Stanford divers to a sweep of the platform and springboard competitions, leading Dave Fall and Clarence Pinkston on the platform, and Pete Desjardins and Pinkston on the springboard. White was the first diver ever to win both diving titles in a single Olympic competition.

Brandsten’s divers won 25 AAU national championships over a nine-year stretch, and he served as U.S. diving coach on four consecutive Olympic teams from 1924 to 1936.

A lost world

For half a century, Searsville Lake functioned as a man-made playground that drew thousands of people from all over the Bay Area for water sports, summer camps, picnics and more — with 1,500 people showing up on a Sunday and 2,500 on holiday weekends. By 1976, pollution had forced its closure, and Stanford eventually converted the land into the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve it remains today.

If you visit and see a rusted metal frame on the old dam, you are looking at what remains of the diving platform — the same structure from which America’s Olympic divers launched themselves toward Paris — and glory.

Contributing Sources: Portola Valley Archives, San Mateo Daily Journal, Stanford Magazine, KOED, Bay Curious, Swimming World Magazine, GoStanford.com