Sugar Pine Reservoir is located at the upper end of Shirttail Canyon. Shirttail Creek flows into the North Fork of the American River just above the once historic Barnes Bar. The canyon got its name when two men named Tuttle and Van Zandt came upon an almost nude man mining along the water's edge. He was wearing nothing but a shirt. The men asked the miner what this place was called and he replied, glancing at his bare legs, "Don't know any name for it yet, but we might as well call it Shirt-tail as anything else."