Tidbits about the history of Clear Lake.

Clear Lake is a 3,684 acre spring fed lake, seven miles long and three miles wide. It was created by the Wisconsin Glacier about 12,000 years ago. It sits atop a land formation in a manner similar to an inverted saucer. Its elevation is higher than the top of the tallest building in Mason City, IA, the largest city in North Iowa located nine miles away. Native Americans knew of the lake and used it for fishing, hunting and camping long before the first settlers came.

Iowa, which was part of the Louisiana Purchase, became a state in 1846. In the winter of 1850, a couple of pioneers, Joseph Hewitt, a soldier, and James Dickirson, a farmer, traveled to Dubuque, Iowa. Seeing that Dubuque was already a rowdy river town, they heard of a lake some 200 miles to the northwest. It was said that the sandy shores of the pristine lake were surrounded by stands of oak, walnut, elm and wild plum. The lake, teeming with fish, was so clear that the bottom could be seen 20 feet below the surface. Flocks of ducks, geese and swans called it home.

Leaving Strawberry Point with their families on May 20, 1851, after a difficult journey they reached the shore of Clear Lake on July 14, 1851. They selected a point on the south shore to take shelter. The two families braved hardships, the wilderness and openly defied the war-painted Sioux to turn Clear Lake into an oasis for the Midwest.

By the mid 1850s, a good number of settlers had followed them to Clear Lake mostly by foot. In 1854 Dickirson received a land grant from the United States for 134 acres of land which is now downtown Clear Lake.

During 1855, a large number of settlers came in and the lands were taken up. Joseph Hewitt entered land and laid out the town of Clear Lake City on the south side. The area was surveyed and included the first campgrounds.

The following spring, James Dickirson started a town called Clear Lake which was laid out on the grounds now used for the cemetery. It was afterward vacated and the town of Livonia was laid out on the same land during the county seat war of 1857. The present town was laid out in 1856 by James Dickirson and Marcus Tuttle on what is now Main Street. At the time it contained about 25 dwellings.

Recreation and the arts have been a consistent part of Clear Lake’s history. A Chautauqua Pavilion once stood in what is now DAR park. Founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church of Iowa in 1875, it was envisioned as a place for people to camp and hold tent meetings. Temperance firebrand Carrie Nation, the president of Tuskegee Institute Booker T. Washington, and elocutionist William Jennings Bryan all spoke there.

An unusual housing cooperative, the Outing Club, was launched in 1895 as a get away for business and professional men and their families. Today residents, many of whom have ties to the founders, still eat at assigned tables in a common dining room. Marlon Brando was one of many famous visitors who stayed there.

“American Gothic” painter Grant Wood spent the final summer of his life in a temporary studio, an old railroad depot, on the north shore of Clear Lake. There he painted and perfected his latest fascination, lithographs. The depot was perched precariously on temporary blocks with the entrance door about three feet off of the ground. Sheep which grazed in a nearby pasture would worm under it on hot days and Wood feared that some day both he and his studio would be carried off on their backs.

Buddy Holly played his last concert at the historic Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake in 1959. Restored by the Dean Snyder family in 1995, the Surf is still host to numerous music and civic events and, since 1979, the annual Winter Dance Party, the first weekend in February.

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