![]() “The first thing I wanted to figure out was who Reeves was, which I was able to do. She introduced the writer to the lake with a curated canoe ride, pointing out historical and natural features. As a childhood friend of the Dakin family, Sande Marshall made her initial visit to the lake in 1953. Hot tub friend Dora Eshleman, whose grandfather and aunt worked for Una and lived at the lake, regaled her with stories of her childhood time there. Boyle’s letters were the second almost-accidental acquisition of information that helped her piece together a detailed history and provided firsthand accounts of life on the lake from 1917-1949. The book tracks land use and ownership in the watershed – from the identity of the mysterious “Reeves” for whom the canyon is named, to Lake Leonard’s namesake, and ultimately to the Dakin family, who has owned the lake property from 1953 to the present day.īrovarney utilized a variety of source materials for the book, including the original Mendocino County histories – one published by Grace Hudson’s father Sande Marshall’s “Recollections of Leonard Lake-” eight transcribed, recorded interviews of some of the individuals included in Brovarney’s book, and a cache of letters written by Una Boyle, whose family owned the lake from 1885-1953. Putnam is just one of whom Brovarney describes as a group of “strong, stubborn, willful women who are not represented in many of the other histories of the area.” Somehow, it’s not surprising that Brovarney highlights the “lake connection” to Grace Hudson.Īlong with biographical materials, the book outlines the habitat of the region, the relationship between the original Native American residents and how white settlement affected Pomo peoples in the middle of the 19th century. Ridgewood Ranch once extended to this creek, and Putnam was a horsewoman, trainer and riding teacher. She’d stride out on her porch with shotgun in hand if she heard a stranger coming up the canyon road near her Mill Creek property.” “Sitting around the hot tub at the old Redwood Health Club, I heard a lot of stories about Hazel,” Brovarney smiles. A trunk filled with a historical treasure trove of Leonard Lake resident Hazel Putnam was the basis for Brovarney’s book. Hazel’s whole life – including these images from the ‘20s and ‘30s when she was a young adult – was encapsulated in that trunk.” Putnam’s family had a cabin downstream from Lake Leonard on Mill Creek since 1904, and she ultimately retired to the property in the early 1960s. ![]() “Inside the trunk were around hundreds of photos of the lake and the Reeves Canyon area belonging to Hazel Putnam. ![]() “I received a message from Dorothy Gayle Hass, who told me that Nantzy Hensley-Schaeffer had learned about a trunk that had been in storage for 20 years.” Brovarney visited Schaeffer’s home in Hopland, and that’s when the first “aha” moment occurred. Hand-painted watercolor maps illustrate the lay of the land and detail landmarks at the lake and in the surrounding Reeves Canyon area.īrovarney is well known for her curatorial contributions to the Grace Hudson Museum and the Mendocino County Museum, as well as her previous books, “Remember Your Relations: The Elsie Allen Baskets, Family & Friends” and “The Sweet Life: Cherry Stories from Butler Ranch.” This book, like a classic mystery began with the discovery of a mysterious trunk in 2014. The book, which represents eight years of dogged research and writing, including several remarkable “kismet” events, traces the story of about two dozen individuals, residents and visitors who shaped the place or were shaped by their time in the canyon and at the bucolic, 16.5-acre lake. Mendocino County writer and historian Dot Brovarney is bringing that history to light with the release of her new book, Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard & Reeves Canyon. 101, the 4,000-acre Lake Leonard Reserve is a little-known fount of local and not-so-local history. ![]()
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