About Gerle Creek Summer Home Tract (GCSHT)

The Gerle Creek Summer Tract location is immediately next to and up on the hillside, to what is now known as Airport Flats. The tract is not on Gerle Creek.  Airport Flats earned its name from the establishment of a summer camp location for the US Army Air Corps in 1931 at the first crossing of Gerle Creek by the Wentworth Springs Road.  The initial camp was called Airport, but over the years varied from Airport, Airport Camp into Airport Flats due to the open area where the main buildings for Airport Camp and water tower were built by the Army in the 1931. The Gerle Creek wooden bridge built in the Summer of 1927 (and washed out in the Winter of 1952-53) made the trip to Wentworth Springs much easier in the early season and helped the Georgetown Water District access the ditch keeper road and diversion dam as well as Loon Lake Dam. This wooden bridge crossing was where the ditch keeper road took off Southwest a mile to the small diversion dam on Gerle Creek where the California Water Company (Georgetown Irrigation District Eventually) obtained water into their earthen ditch which took it to South Fork Mill and their water powered sawmill, then via dirt ditches and wooden flumes all the way to Georgetown.  

Historically and most importantly, the US Forest Service laid out the Gerle Creek Summer Home Tract in the fire damaged, burn scar area which resulted from the Bottle Hill Fire of 1917 and not along Gerle Creek. The entire tract still shows strong indications of the fire which burned in the tract location in 1917, even today.  Airport Flats became a formal USFS Campground, in 1997.

The Eldorado National Forest and the Georgetown Ranger District originally planned to open a summer home tract and did initial work including preparing maps and layout in the present location next to Airport Camp above Gerle Creek in 1953 but it was not till 1957 before the details could be resolved where they finally accepted people who had signed up in years earlier for a lot in Summer of 1957. There were five original leaser holders in 1957.

By 1961, the existing lot owners organized and formed a non-profit corporation called Gerle Creek Summer Home Tract Association which would be a basis for installing a full water supply system for the summer home tract. This water system was completed by the end of the season in 1964 which provides water to all 41 cabins in this tract.

The association has since 1961 managed the tract and water system for the 41 leaseholders and continues to do so today.