I didn’t keep many childhood trinkets. My interests shift too often for that. But I always held onto my series of Chronicle Tackle-Box Guides by Jim Freeman that he published around 1971. The Shasta Lake Fishing guide was the one that really stuck with me. Even though I only visited there once as a kid, the lake always had a pull on me.

In the mid 1990s, we started taking houseboat vacations on Shasta in the spring. The guide was outdated by then. Still, I loved Freeman’s thorough cove-by-cove descriptions. It was perfect for finding good bass fishing spots. You are not exactly mobile fishing-wise in a houseboat, so scoping out better fishing areas to stake the houseboat was helpful.

We usually ended up in the Sulanharas Creek arm. Back then, it was still called Squaw Creek. Many of Freeman’s observations about that area still hold up today, and we’ve caught many bass there. But one location in his book remained a complete mystery. He mentioned a place called Shasta Dude Ranch.

I could never find it on a map. I tried searching Google and came up with absolutely nothing. It was like the ranch never existed.

Freeman’s location of Shasta Dude Ranch seemed to imply Frenchman Gulch, but the many times we tied up in Frenchman Gulch there was nothing to suggest that it had ever been anything but wilderness.

A month ago I decided to see if AI could help. Claude helped me narrow down that the land around the end of Frenchman Gulch was actually parcelled for private ownership. It was a clue. If Shasta Dude Ranch had existed at this part of the lake, it must have been on one or more of these parcels.

A search of Shasta County Assessor’s database confirmed that while most parcels had reverted to U.S. government ownership, there is one parcel at the end of Frenchman Gulch currently marked as improved recreational property. Indeed a couple years ago, I noticed a cabin had been built and it is visible at the end of the gulch. Could this have been the location of the dude ranch?

Claude couldn’t take me any further, so I fed all this info into ChatGPT. That conversation led me to a Facebook post about an old paddlewheeler boat. It was called the Silverthorn Queen. And that post had the missing piece of the puzzle. A man named Steve Brock built the boat in 1965 for $20,000. It was a functioning sternwheeler built on an old federal barge. He used it for dance parties and is boasted tables, chairs, a jukebox, and even a soft drink machine.

Here was the puzzle piece: he also used the boat to transport horses. The post said that on May 11, 1968, Brock opened Shasta Lake Dude Ranch on Squaw Creek and he used the Silverthorn Queen to transport horses (and presumably guests) to the ranch.

Brock eventually opened Silverthorn Resort in 1972. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that by the time he opened the resort, the dude ranch was history. I imagine the cost and manpower involved in running a dude ranch on a remote cove of the lake was probably not a good return on investment. Not to mention having to transport horses on a boat! Interest in Hollywood Westerns had already peaked in the early 1960s (Bonanza notwithstanding), and I’m sure dude ranches had seen their peak as well.

It feels good to finally have that mystery solved! It’s funny how the history of a boat led me to the answer I was looking for. Have you ever spent years tracking down a local legend or a place that seemed to vanish? I’d love to hear about it.