Dream Lake
With the property now in Sifford’s control, the family planned to operate the ranch as a tourist resort, providing camping spots along Hot Springs Creek where Drake had rented campsites, a limited number of rooms (in Drake’s house), meals, mineral baths and mineral water (from Soda Springs). The Siffords also offered trail guide services to the many natural attractions in the area such as Devil’s Kitchen and Boiling Springs Lake. Beyond the valley, the many lakes and streams on the flanks of Lassen Peak were another scenic draw for visitors.
Improvements to the facilities during these early years reflect the first attempts by the Siffords to transform Drake’s rustic campground into a full-service mountain resort. In the Siffords’ guest register, covering the years 1901-1913, Alex Sifford wrote the name of the property as the “Mount Lassen Hot Springs Hotel.” This designation did not endure, however, and in 1908, the Siffords formally named the property “Drakesbad.”
In 1932, Sifford developed a new recreational facility for the exclusive use of Drakesbad’s guests, Dream Lake. Sifford built a dam on a “swampy pothole” southwest of the main house, which was drained by a tributary to Hot Springs Creek. The dam created a body of water for boating and fishing and general recreation, and Sifford named the resultant three-acre pond “Dream Lake.” Dream Lake was built, according to Sifford, to “keep it full of fish so the children and most anybody could go over there and catch a fish.” Sifford stocked the lake with rainbow trout. Over the years, beaver as well as floods threatened the structural integrity of the earthen fill dam. Every spring and again every fall, Sifford and guests would clear out the beaver dams at the spillway of the lake in an effort to reduce the water pressure on the dam.
