Photo Courtesy: The City of Lakeport – Lakeport Courthouse Museum
As Clear Lake’s abundant water shushes along its shores in mini-waves, bird song entices you to come close and view prolific lake life. Here, among the tule reeds, is a landscape rich with dragonflies, frogs, coots, mallards, great blue herons, green herons, splendid osprey, and more. The tall and once prolific reed called tule once ringed Clear Lake in profusion, and it grew in much of California’s wetlands near lakes and rivers. Pomo people who lived around Clear Lake over 14,000 years ago utilized tule reed for their boats.
Tule was a favorite of many indigenous tribes throughout California. The reeds growing near the lake were managed by the indigenous land stewards and were not over-harvested, thus ensuring their future growth in order to build tule reed boats, huts, baskets, mats, and more. Tule boats were constructed by binding bundles of reeds together with grape vine. Tule boats were used for fishing as well as commuting to other communities across the lake and to its islands. Tule plants also provided food from the white tuber section of the root, and the tubers are said to be both tender and sweet.
Tule is a plant native to California, and is often called bulrush. Since the plant matures in marshes, ponds, and around lakes all over the western portion of California, when the Spaniards arrived hundreds of years ago, they called the wetlands ‘tulares’, with the name for the reed eventually morphing to ‘tule’.
The heartrending history of enslavement and mistreatment of indigenous people by the Spanish missionaries, soldiers, Mexican land barons starting in the 1820s, and then the growing population of pioneers, settlers and shopkeepers, combined with the California Gold Rush, Lake County’s indigenous population shrunk drastically, changing Clear Lake’s use to include other forms of lake transportation.
Around the time of the 1850s, pioneers were settling in and creating cattle ranches, growing orchards, mining borax, gold, and quicksilver. By 1856, there were two public school districts in Clear Lake Township. As Lake County began to grow, hotels and retreats were constructed, making the county known to tourists.
Steamers on Clear Lake were a common sight in 1874. The clean air and expansive vistas brought about prosperity and then established the need for transportation on Clear Lake. Steamers were conveying passengers- both tourists and locals- around the lake in 1874, mainly in the summer months. Although the Clear Lake Railroad never came to fruition, tourists flocked to Lake County from San Francisco and beyond to ‘take the waters’ as attending the hot springs resorts was popular in Lake, Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino Counties.
A steamer called The City of Lakeport was owned by Captain Floyd in 1874. He had his steamer constructed in San Francisco, basing his design on another steamer called The City of Peking. Floyd included lush design components, including Clear Lake oak and pine construction, as well as teak trim on his 78-foot-long vessel. The City of Lakeport was considered the most beautiful boat on the lake with its two cabins, pilot house, and afterdeck. She ran passengers and cargo between Lower Lake and Lakeport.
With the success of the steamer, The City of Lakeport, Captain Floyd expanded his operations on Clear Lake in 1891 to include his all-metal boat called The Whisper, which was also constructed in San Francisco and built by the Iron Works.
Along with cargo and steamers chugging around the lake, Clear Lake became known as a seaplane base in later years when the Alameda Naval Air Station flew their ‘flying boats’ or seaplanes on the lake during World War II and into the Cold War era whenever it was unsafe to land in San Francisco Bay. Today, the annual Clear Lake Splash-In takes place in springtime on Clear Lake and reminds us of times past when our lake was used as an auxiliary naval land station. The Clear Lake Splash-In is the oldest seaplane rally in the West.
Clear Lake was bustling with steamers and other water shuttles to accommodate vacationers visiting the various resorts and going fishing. The commercial fishing industry grew on Clear Lake. Fishing in Clear Lake was popular then since there were not many man-made reservoirs constructed in the late 19th century. This allowed Clear Lake to gain importance as a huge freshwater fishing destination in the 19th and 20th centuries, and now, into the 21st century, as Clear Lake is renowned by Bassmaster Magazine as the best bass fishing lake on the West Coast and is called The Bass Capitol of the West.
The last remaining commercial fishery closed its doors on Clear Lake in 1941.
Today, as you kayak, go fishing, or water ski on the lake, it’s easy to envision life from yesteryear. Looking out across the ancient lake through a cloud break, the sun shines down to form luminous detail in the fringe of tule reeds where yellow-headed blackbirds play hide-and-seek. The world of tule reeds is an island in space.
