- Kathleen Scavone
- Posted On
Lake County Time Capsule: Romancing the railroad
“It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any country. It is too tedious. Stage-coaching is infinitely more delightful.” – Mark Twain
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – According to old newspaper accounts and the files of past Lake County historian Henry Mauldin, there have been dozens of railway companies that had elaborate plans to bring the railroad to Lake County.
Without exception, however, all of those plans failed, leaving our county devoid of railway transportation to this day.
Is that good news, or bad? It depends upon whom you ask.
In 1914 when the Yolo Water and Power Co. constructed Clear Lake Dam at Cache Creek to create an increase in storage capacity, the Clear Lake Railroad instigated a railroad line beginning in Hopland, and made plans to build a depot in Lakeport.
Those plans never came to fruition, and the Clear Lake Railroad was able to grade only a few miles of track land and deliver timbers for a tunnel, before the company folded due to financial problems.
Another amongst the 56 or so plans to bring a train to Lake County was in 1889 when the Southern Pacific Railway made a proposal for a route from Woodland to Cache Creek, into Lower Lake, then heading over to Mendocino County to meet up with the Fort Bragg Railroad at the Noyo River headwaters.
After much deliberation, it was decided that this plan would be unfeasible, financially.
Many, many detailed plans for a railroad in Lake County were drawn up between 1880 into the 1900s.
There were dreamers who had romantic visions of what a railroad could bring to our county.
There were visionaries who drummed up a degree of support, but just not enough investors.
There also were scammers who made the news of a railroad here public, just to deceive the legitimate railroad companies from doing the same thing.
Worse than that, just as there were fake maps sold to gold-seekers during the Gold Rush in California, there were bamboozlers who were out to make a buck selling fake stock in railway companies.
It is interesting to think about what Lake County would be like today, had a railroad been built yesterday.
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is an educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.