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The Switzerland of America
This unusual promotional bird's-eye view of Clear Lake, California, and its surroundings offers a sweeping perspective from above Lakeport, looking east across the largest natural freshwater lake entirely in California, toward Mount Konocti (right mid-ground) and the volcanic ridges that encircle the basin.
The composition is impressive and grand today, just as it was intended to be when Elliott Publishing Company of San Francisco produced it at the end of the 19th century. It was designed to impress nineteenth-century viewers enough to visit, invest, or move to the Clear Lake area, promoting the region’s development and health tourism, as emphasized by the subtitle “Lake County, The Switzerland of America.”
The image shows Mount Konocti, an extinct volcano, about 4,305 feet in elevation, which has long been held as sacred to the local Pomo Indians. To this day, its dramatic dome remains the unmistakable landmark of California’s Lake County. The broad triple summit overlooks Buckingham Bay and looms as the scenic boundary between the two large bodies of water. One of the print’s central aims was to show Lake County as accessible from the outside. This is reflected in the depiction of fixed passenger-ferry routes crossing the lake in a triangular network that connected Lakeport with Bartlett Springs and Lower Lake.
The lake itself is vast, covering an area of nearly 68 square miles. Geologists estimate the depression to be 2.5 million years old, making it the oldest freshwater lake on the North American continent. Steep forested hills, dotted with farms and scattered homesteads, surround the basin. The makers of this view were well aware of the lake’s attraction and deliberately designed it with the lake as its centerpiece. The placid water is dotted with sailboats and steamers, while cultivated fields, orchards, and small towns cluster along the shore. Two steamers are heading towards the Lakeport township in the foreground, trailed by dotted lines to confirm their nature as permanent public transportation.
The lithograph is as much a map as it is a picture. The county seat of Lakeport has been drawn in plan, its streets and buildings carefully arranged to reflect a late 19th-century reality. Among its distinguishable features are the courthouse (built in 1871), the docks, and several churches. Beyond the township are green fields, tidy orchards, and an early race track. The legend at the bottom of the view identifies some of the area's key locales, including hotels, liveries, saloons, and the local Farmers Savings Bank. Several large ranches and fine residences are also listed. Smaller villages, such as Upper Lake, Lower Lake, Kelseyville, and Bartlett Springs, appear in the main image as labeled clusters of houses.
As was common in many of Elliott’s birds-eye views, the margins are filled with inset illustrations portraying local landmarks (e.g. hotels, residences, ranch homes, churches, and businesses – each labeled by name). In the center of the lower set, a smaller bird’s-eye-view depicts the broader region, situating Lakeport and Clear Lake in relation to the Russian River and the North Pacific Railway, and showing the transportation infrastructure that connected Clear Lake to San Francisco and via stage from the nearby railroad towns of Ukiah, Hopland, or Pieta.
Among the places highlighted by the pictorial vignettes is a view of Rufus Tallman’s two-story hotel (built in 1874) and the attached Blue Wing Saloon. Tallman’s was so well known that when a fire destroyed it in 1895, a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle called it “the loss of a popular resort.” Another image shows horses hitched outside Grewell’s Livery, Feed & Sale Stable in Lower Lake, while A.A. Carley’s Residence in Lakeport underscores the town’s fine private residences.
Among the most resonant images is a view of Bartlett Springs: one of the area's finest spa facilities. To a 19th-century audience, these vignettes were crucial selling points that showcased Lake County’s appeal to visitors, immigrants, and investors alike. Owners of the depicted facilities would likely have paid a premium to be featured in this manner. For the modern viewer, however, it provides a comprehensive and faithful visual record of Clear Lake in the late 19th century.
Late-19th-century Lake County was in the thralls of rapid growth: pioneers had cut trees, tilled land, and planted crops for decades. In the 1850s and ’60s, settlers planted orchards and tended cattle on ranches and farms around the lake. By the 1880s, the hillsides bore enough vines and fruit trees to ensure that during the harvest, wagon loads of produce would be shipped from the Lakeport docks. Some of these orchards and vineyards are depicted in the main view as planted rows of trees and shrubs, while some larger estates and their owners are identified in the framing vignettes.
In the late 1800s, California’s Lake County was well known for its fruit, particularly pears and grapes. The British actress Lillie Langtry had bought thousands of acres to start a vineyard here, and local farmers were already shipping their produce across county lines. Railroads never quite reached Lakeport, but every spare acre was put to use. Walnut and fruit orchards, dairy ranches, and hop fields are all suggested by the patchwork of fields in the print. To late 19th-century viewers, the combination of a temperate climate, fertile volcanic soils, and hard work implied an enormous potential for prosperity.
In addition to local agriculture and emergent industries like quicksilver mining and commercial fishing, one of Lake County’s great booms came as resort and health tourism. When this view was published around 1890, wealthy travelers from San Francisco and beyond would travel north “to take the waters.” Advertisements like this often refer to Clear Lake as the “Switzerland of America,” highlighting its dramatic peaks, clean air, and alpine-like retreats. Once the railroad came within a day’s ride, visitors flocked to the area’s hot springs and mountain retreats. This commercial dynamic is revealed in the vignettes, which focus on Lakeport’s grand hotels.
The promotion of spas was just as significant, signaling health and leisure to most viewers. The popular spa resort at Bartlett Springs is shown in the main view as a cluster of buildings across the water from Lakeport. But an enlarged vignette in the top band captures it in much greater detail, underscoring its luxurious conditions. Unsurprisingly, such advertisements would also be exaggerated at times, as is seen here in the presentation of the Stockwell property as “Highland Springs”. This suggests the presence of a hot-spring spa, when the property was more of a camping ground outside Lakeport.
Rarity
The view is extremely rare.
Reps locates only the example at the Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley).
