“For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail”
Variations of this proverb have been told at least as early as the 14th century. Initially meant to highlight the importance of military logistics, it gradually became associated with the butterfly effect—the theory that a seemingly unimportant action can have significant and lasting results. As someone who dabbles in the past, I sometimes enjoy thinking about the “what ifs” of history. What if James W. Marshall had decided to build the Sutter sawmill on a different site than Coloma in 1848 California? Would the Gold Rush have happened? Probably, but you get the idea. Some historians call these moments of potential variation historical swerves.
Lake County had its own historical swerves, when a single decision or set of decisions irrevocably altered its future path. In some way, our current water situation in Lake County — namely that we don’t own the waters of Clear Lake — can be directly traced back to the peculiarities of the story I will now relate.
The Story Begins
The story starts in 1865 when Orrin Simmons, a Berkley resident and agent of the Clear Lake Water Company, purchased the Fowler Mill, which was located about 2 miles from the outlet on Cache Creek. The Clear Lake Water Company (hereafter referred to as the CLWC) was backed by investors from San Francisco who hoped to invest in the fledging community of Lake County, which only four years earlier had been organized as a county proper. Their ultimate goal was to find a reliable source of water for San Francisco. Towards this end, they had agents throughout Lake and Napa counties establishing investments and feeling out different prospects, which included Clear Lake. In 1866 the CLWC received authorization from the state legislature to build a lock on Cache Creek, somewhere between the outlet of the lake and their newly purchased mill. The key features of the bill stipulated that the CLWC could build a dam so long as they did not drop the level of the lake more than a foot during the dry months and that they not raise the water “above a point where it usually stands” during the winter months. The franchise was for thirty years.
They didn’t last three.
Thus legally armed, the CLWC replaced the modest lumber and earth dam that Fowler had built with a large stone dam. Fowler’s small grist mill was also replaced with a larger mill, the foundation of which was partially built directly onto the stone dam. By the end of 1866 an extensive planing mill was also constructed. Seeds were sown and logging camps established. Morgan, Coyote and Lower Lake valleys were the focus of most of the operations, although logging was also started farther afield in the northeastern stretches of the county. From around the lake trees were felled, dragged to the lakeshore and barged to the lumber mill in a constant stream of industry.
The CLWC not only barged lumber and grain but people too as they shipped employees around the lake to the company’s various properties. At a time when the county was still forming, the CLWC provided a much needed source of jobs for locals throughout the county. Farmers were needed to sow and reap the grain for the mill, lumbermen to cut and haul the wood to the sawmill and blacksmiths to repair tools. Lucas Willey, a recent immigrant to Lake County, worked for the company in 1868. In January of that year Willey was hired as an overseer of a “Log Camp,” located near modern-day Lucerne. His wages were set at $65 a month and lodgings were provided for him and his family. A tidy little arrangement and, as Lucas himself admitted, it “is about sixty five dollars a month more than I was making in the shop so I took it.” Shortly after arriving by himself, he called for his family, who arrived on the company’s ship “Viking” from their Lower Lake home. Lucas’ wife quickly took on the job of cook. After only two weeks, the Willey family had gone from nearly destitute to making a combined income of $80 a month.
The ranch and logging camp that Lucas ran was one of several that supplied grain and wood to the two mills on Cache Creek. In a January 1866 letter to Orrin Simmons, a certain E.M. Day—one of the managers of the mill—estimated that in one year they could cut and plane 500,000 feet of lumber. Taking into account the cost of hauling the lumber to the mill and actually planing each one, Day still estimated that the company would make an annual profit of $5,000—not an insignificant amount for the first year of operation. This estimate would later prove to be far from reality.
By October of 1866 the CLWC had firmly established themselves as a major industrial power in the county. With this power, however, inevitably came enemies. On Saturday October 27, 1866 Leslie P. Nichols, one of the managers of the on-the-ground operations, was happy to report to Orrin Simmons that they were testing the newly-constructed saw mill. Nichols ended his letter to Simmons by reporting an incident with a group of men he identified as “the Lakeport delegation.” It’s not certain what the delegation wanted, but Nichols believed that they were “endeavoring to make a raise off the Company”. The confrontation ended without incident, and Nichols intimated to Simmons that it was best to “ignore them entirely—it will soon blow over.”
Nearly two years to the week, however, an entirely different Lakeport delegation returned to the mill, this time armed and intent on nothing less than the complete destruction of the dam and mills … to be continued.
Tony Pierucci is Curator of Lake County Museums
