LeBaron: What would a railroad have done for Lake County?

Somewhere, in a long-ago history class, a professor illustrated a point about the progression of civilization by pointing out that the Irish were about 100 years behind the English and most European countries economically because, he said, the Romans had never conquered Ireland. An important step in the advance of history had been skipped.

I thought about that bit of academic wisdom in recent weeks when several people, commenting on the devastation caused by the Lake County fires, said things like “Poor old Lake County, just can’t catch a break.”

Sorrowful observations like that are based on statistics, to be sure. Lake is the sixth from the bottom of California’s 58 counties in per-capita income, the median being less than $40,000 on most statistical charts. The average cost of a home is about $225,000, so we understand our fellow workers who make the long commute down the mountain.

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LAKE BECAME a county in 1861, 11 years after Sonoma County was organized. It was carved out of the corners of Napa, Mendocino and Colusa counties. It already had a rugged history. The first two white settlers in the area - one named Kelsey - brutalized the Pomo Indians and were killed in retaliation. Friends and relatives formed a kind of posse, known as the Napa Raiders, and went on an Indian-killing rampage. They were arrested and brought to trial in a case, which had the distinction, in 1850, of being Case No. 1 on the docket of the new California State Supreme Court. Nonetheless, justice was avoided. The high court sent the case back to the Sonoma Justice Court, where the defendants were allowed to make bail and left the state.

In Sonoma County, truth be told, most of us don’t pay a lot of attention to Lake County. Too much of the “everyday” news that we read is not positive - crime, car crashes, gnat infestations and mercury in Clear Lake.

We visit the hot springs. Some own weekend homes. We drive over the mountain for a fair-weather shortcut to the Sacramento Valley and I-5. Some of us know that Clear Lake is the largest freshwater lake entirely in California, since we share Tahoe with Nevada. Others simply know it as the best damn bass fishing lake in the state.

It’s obvious that mountain beauty, starry nights and an astonishing array of hot springs offer a potential that has never been truly realized.

Maybe it isn’t because Lake County “can’t catch a break.” It may be that it couldn’t catch a train.

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LAKE COUNTY is like the Ireland of that old lesson. It has missed a major step in the historical progression. Not Romans, of course, but a railroad.

Lake County, you see, is the only county in California that was never served by a railroad.

It never had those 40 or 50 years of “modern” transportation around the turn of the 20th century that hauled crops to market, brought tourists to see what wonders there were, raised real estate prices and pulled in investors. Such things were expected, but never happened.

Consider, if you will, this excerpt from a directory of Napa, Lake, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties published in 1874:

“Lake County is, even now, thinly populated. There are several reasons for this. First, because the advantage of its climate and the richness of its soil are not generally known abroad; second, the means of communication between it and adjoining counties is by mountain roads and axle.

“It is proposed to extend the Napa Valley Railroad from Calistoga to Lake County. … The day is near at hand when the shrill whistle of the locomotive will be heard on the shores of Clear Lake. Then a great future will dawn for Lake County; … her towns will become beautiful cities and her mines bring forth the hidden treasures of the earth.”

That never happened. Routes were proposed from every direction. Stock was offered. Documents were signed. By 1911, one of Lakeport’s leading citizens, Judge T.B. Bond, would tell historian Aurelius Carpenter that he had, in his time, “subscribed a million dollars for railroads and was never called upon to pay one cent.”

These were what were known as “paper railroads,” each with a prospectus, a map of the route and great plans. Lake County was a destination for 22 paper railroads. None was ever built. The closest was a railroad from Yolo County, which got no farther than Rumsey, at the edge of the Sacramento Valley, before it was abandoned.

There were routes chosen from Ukiah, from Potter Valley, from Hopland, from Napa by way of not only Calistoga but Pope Valley, an electric line from the Russian River following the Pieta Creek canyon.

The last was the most promising: The Highland Pacific Line offered a route from Santa Rosa through Alexander Valley to Preston, then up the mountain and down to Lakeport. That failed plan was the last gasp.

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EARLY ON, large tracts of land were sold with the promise that the rails were coming soon. One exceedingly colorful investor brought the attention of the world to Lake County in the early 1880s.

That would be Lillie Langtry, the “Jersey Lily,” the toast of two continents, the acknowledged mistress of England’s King Edward VII when Queen Victoria’s eldest son was still the playboy Prince of Wales.

Oscar Wilde wrote a play for her (“Lady Windermere’s Fan”); British Prime Minister William Gladstone was a suitor. Her fame preceded her to America. Judge Roy Bean, the famous “Law West of the Pecos,” fell in love with her picture and named his Texas town Langtry in her honor.

In San Francisco on a theater tour in 1882-83, she decided, she later wrote, that she needed a “permanent country home” to indulge her fondness “for livestock and outdoor life.”

She arrived in St. Helena in her private blue railcar emblazoned with wreaths of golden lilies - a conveyance she described in her autobiography as “bearing a family resemblance to Cleopatra’s barge” - then left it on a siding and went up the mountain to her new country estate, a 4,500-acre former Mexican land grant, the Guenoc Rancho in Coyote Valley, 8 miles from Middletown - or, as she pronounced it in BBC accents, “Middleton.”

She fully expected that her “Cleopatra’s barge” railcar would soon be able to carry her all the way to her Western idyll, but the rails never got past Calistoga, and she sold the property in the 1890s.

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SO THAT WAS then. And now, 132 years later, truth be told, Lake County doesn’t get the kind of attention it did when Lillie was listening for the train whistle and businessmen were vying to get a piece of the place they called “the Switzerland of America.”

It isn’t until our good neighbor is struck by disaster that we take that longer look. The Valley fire burned for 25 days, destroyed 1,280 homes, claimed four lives and, for tragic reasons, got the attention of the state and the nation.

So what do we know about Lake County now? We find much to admire about how its residents are dealing with disaster. We’ve heard a lot of grim tales. Friends and neighbors died in the flames, a fate of biblical proportions by any measure. Homes and treasures and life’s dreams have gone up in smoke. But we haven’t heard any whining.

We have all grown accustomed to the media’s reports on natural disasters and, too often, we have puzzled over the blame game that comes almost immediately - “Where is the government when we need help?” “Who is responsible for this outrage?” “How was this allowed to happen?” “What am I supposed to do now?”

We are not hearing this from Lake County.

If you want to know what people are saying and doing, check the Facebook entries of Voris Mitchell Brumfield, a former county supervisor who has lived in Lake for almost 40 years. (Her Anderson Springs home miraculously survived the fire.)

You won’t see any whines or diatribes. You will find the places where people can get gloves, masks and shovels, contact FEMA, learn the time and place of the next community dinner, find their friends and relations - all of this interspersed with some prayer and poetry.

I wanted to talk to Voris about all this, but I couldn’t catch up with her. She is the lay pastor of the Kelseyville United Methodist Church and a kind of one-woman task force, as her Facebook postings indicate. So, I share a recent post of hers that pretty much says it all:

“To say this event has been life changing is an understatement. For me, the reality has yet to sink in. Driving in our communities seems like I am in the television program ‘The Twilight Zone.’ Yet, there are many folks in County, State and the Federal government working for us. For many, the loss of treasured family items, work tools, collections, and photos is heart breaking. But we are a strong people who can help reassure one another of our ability to honor what was lost, grieve, and rebuild. We can do this! Love to you ALL and let me know where you are.”

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AND SO, from the ashes, community rises. “Lake County Rising” is the title of the county’s wine grape promotional group. It has added “Relief Fund” at the end and a motto: “We are Neighbors!”

Darn right we are! And proud to share a boundary with our mountain neighbor. We’re paying attention now.