From Vintage Vineyard to Luxury Lake House
© Alane K. Dashner
Lodi’s exciting new Lake House project will be a great improvement for the northeast corner of Turner and Lower Sacramento Roads. The plan is under permit review now, and unless something unforeseen happens, construction will start soon. “We anticipate breaking ground this summer,” says John Vierra, owner of NJA Architecture.
First we’ll see 150 gated upscale apartments taking shape, followed by a 90-suite hotel and ground-level retail with restaurants. Strong new trees will shade pleasant walkways as we amble eastward toward Lodi Lake.
So goodbye to that chain-link fence covered with advertisements. Good riddance to the twisted trees lingering on wasted acres.
But before those blackened trees are torn out, let’s pause to remember the smell of almond blossoms, the jingle of a horse collar, and the laughter of children…
How did the property look years ago?
The Lodi Lake we love today didn’t exist until the early 1900s.
From time before memory, the narrow Mokelumne River snaked its way down the Sierra Nevada foothills past here on its way to the Pacific Ocean. In springtime, the river swelled and flooded its low banks. Miwok Native Americans hunted here, and in autumn when the giant salmon returned from the Pacific, the Miwok feasted.
Everything changed following the discovery of gold in California. Smart newcomers realized they could get rich by feeding the population explosion of hungry miners, and soon all this wetland began to look like European-style farms waiting to happen.
View of the Smith house and property in 1957 and the Lake House project today. Original photo from the Stockton Record 4/23/1957, courtesy of the San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum. Overwritten marks by Explore Lodi with review by the Lodi Preservation Alliance and NJA Architecture.
The Smith family made a home here
Charles Smith arrived via ox-team from Maine to California in 1853. In 1862 he married Isabelle, who had come from Toronto via the Panama route. Charles bought land northwest of Escalon and another 80 acres of lowland on the south bank of the Mokelumne, just upriver from the growing town of Woodbridge. Charles moved his wife and four children here to the Mokelumne property.
Looking north at the Smith residence. Today the site of Lodi’s electric substation. Undated photo courtesy of Kathy Grant, City of Lodi Dept. of Public Works; photographer unknown.
The Smith family settled into their wood-frame house on today’s Turner Road (see photos). They planted a vineyard and kept livestock on the higher ground, and they worked with their marshy low acres as Nature allowed. Charles became a school trustee and a founder of the Woodbridge Masons. Isabelle was an early member of the Woodbridge Presbyterian Church. Every school day, as Lodi’s big school bell rang in the distance, the Smith children rode by horse and wagon on Turner Road to the Woodbridge school.
Bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump, say your tires as you drive on Turner Road near Lodi Lake. That’s history you’re hearing: In 1882 local farmers and merchants pushed through a railroad track set uncomfortably close to the Smith house on its way through Woodbridge to the Delta. They sued Charles to get right-of-way through his land.
Soon the four Smith children were grown and the oldest three married. Only Estella stayed single.
Pioneer life was hard… for humans
Is it a good idea to live in a marsh? Mosquitoes think so. When the Hudson Bay fur trappers arrived in this area in the early 1800s, at least one trapper’s blood was teeming with malaria. Our local mosquitoes did what mosquitoes do, and waves of malaria epidemics began rolling through California’s marshy regions.
The Smiths’ older daughter, Anna May, died of malarial fever in 1895, leaving behind two very young children. A string of deaths followed. Isabelle died in 1899. Charles soon married Pernina Heming, becoming her third husband, but he was dead a few months later. A few days after his death Pernina’s family came to fetch her but she died in the carriage in front of the Smith house.
All of these Smiths, including both Isabelle and Pernina, are buried together in Woodbridge Masonic Cemetery.
Farmer Estella took the reins
When Charles’s will was read in 1902, his Escalon property was divided among six family members. He bequeathed sole ownership of his Mokelumne property to his daughter Estella.
At a time when married women were legally unable to own property – everything was given to their husbands – Estella’s unmarried status paid off. She actively ran the Mokelumne property for 35 years, 1902-1937.
Estella was a loving aunt to her twelve rambunctious nieces and nephews, and her property was their second home. She planted an almond orchard and used those blooms to decorate her house for community get-togethers. Athletic since childhood when she merrily raced her pony everywhere, Estella was one of the first locals to buy an automobile. She was also one of the first members of the Woodbridge Golf and Country Club and a competitive card player.
Estella’s lowland became a “lake”
Several attempts had been made to build a wooden dam at Woodbridge, but they all washed away. It was on Estella’s watch that the first concrete dam went up. River water backed up onto her lowland to form the dam’s reservoir, which she proudly named “Smith’s Lake.”
As Estella got older she began selling her land, to the City of Lodi who renamed the reservoir “Lodi Lake,” to General Mills, and others.
Hello, Lake House
Today, the San Joaquin Mosquito and Vector Control teams have malaria under control. Flooding along the Mokelumne is rare. Aside from a few old photos in Lodi Lake’s Discovery Center and the twisted vegetation soon to be torn out for the Lake House project, we see no traces of the Smith family on their property.
Might we hope that a single young almond tree will be planted in the new Lake House complex, dedicated to the memory of Estella Smith?
