Tyson Lake is a small pond on the upper edge of Piedmont at the top of Indian Gulch’s watershed. It’s invisible to everyone but the homeowners around it.

It’s named for James H. Tyson (1865-1938), a native of western Denmark who was probably born Jens Thiessen and came to California in 1880 to join his father, Captain L. P. Tyson. The Tyson family entered Alameda society and James later became wealthy on his own as president of the Sunset Lumber Company, with its yard at Oak and First Streets, then went into banking.

James Tyson is an important figure in Piedmont’s history. He was a director of the Piedmont Academy in 1920 and part of the group that drew up Piedmont’s city charter in 1923. He owned a large parcel that spanned the Oakland-Piedmont border, and built a modest house on the Oakland side at 25 Sotelo Avenue (now part of 70 Sotelo), where he lived from 1917 to 1936.

More pertinently, Tyson was a key founder of the Piedmont Council of the Boy Scouts in 1921, and he opened his land for the local troops. The place was called Camp Scouting. At first there were day camps on summer weekends, then overnights and longer stays in following years as the boys and their leaders gained experience. The pond became the camp’s swimming pool in 1924. Soon they had a shooting range up there.

Tyson’s lake began as an excavated basin with an earthen dam, reportedly made in 1910. An ephemeral stream fed water into it during the rainy season, but I think the basin intersects the water table and never dries up. This is how the Sanborn map showed it in 1929.

^{Library of Congress}

The camp was used into the mid-1940s, after Tyson had died. By then the property had been subdivided, and the lake itself was owned collectively by the surrounding landowners through the Tyson Lake Corporation, formed in 1937. Since then it’s been both a problem and an asset.

On the problem side, a trespasser drowned in it in 1951 and another one in 1952. At the same time the city wanted to build a school on its property downstream, and people worried about the dam breaking. Wrangling ensued for several years — the Tyson Lake Corporation had never been “activated,” among other wrinkles — but by the end of 1958 the lake was fenced off and the dam was strengthened.

The city never did build that school, and now the site is the Hampton Field sports park. The upper edge of the park is firmly fenced, and there’s little to see. The lake is a closely held secret.

On the plus side, real-estate ads for the properties there have always bragged about the “lake privileges” and the “riparian rights.” That’s where you’ll find pictures of Tyson Lake looking its best.

^{2026 photo from Redfin}

The lake contains a small, continuous aeration fountain with a tiny island near it, more of a tussock really, that sometimes disappears during high water levels. The little boat landing was emplaced in 2022.

^{2009 photo from Zillow}

As lakes go, I think Tyson Lake has a long life ahead of it. Not much sediment washes into it, and its owners will surely keep it as long as its rarity boosts their (very high) property values.

This entry was posted on 14 September 2026 at 7:59 am and is filed under Oakland streams and water. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.