How many Gar Woods does it take to fill a lake? Over the past century, Lake Tahoe has been home to dozens of the highly prized speedboats built by early 20th Century boat racing champion Garfield A. Wood. This plethora of Detroit-built watercraft in use on Lake Tahoe, high in the Sierra, was owing in large measure to the strenuous promotional efforts of Homewood Gar Wood Agent Jacob P. “Jake” Obexer, who by the end of the 1931 boating season had persuaded ten local summer residents to become Gar Wood owners.

While the Chris-Craft boats then being produced by Woods’ friend and competitor Chris Smith relied on volume and affordability as their chief marketing strategies, Wood sought as his customers those who demanded the very best and expected that their boats would be tailored to their personal specifications, from upholstery color and style to the tint of the deck stain.

Among Gar Wood’s most ardent Tahoe advocates were the West Coast’s most prominent Capitalists, whose fathers, in the days before the rise of personal runabouts, had cruised Tahoe aboard the larger displacement vessels in use around the turn of the 20th Century.

First of the long line of Gar Woods to arrive at Tahoe seems to have been a 1927 model named NAVAJO, commissioned by Charles H. Kendrick, third Commodore of the Lake Tahoe Power Boat Club. NAVAJO was one of three boats featuring painted (rather than varnished) topsides. Hers were black, while those of Jim Stack Jr.’s JIM JR (originally a sedan) were white and those of William S. Ray’s Bijou ride boat JUNE BUG, a 1929 model, were blue.

Ironically, the year of the Stock Market Crash was also the zenith of Tahoe Gar Wood purchases, with Commodore Edwin Letts Oliver’s HEY THERE III (later to be acquired by Henry J. Kaiser Sr. and renamed LEMME GO FIRST) among the handful of Gar Woods debuting that season.

Obexer’s other 1929 marine debutante was the two-cockpit NAN-JE-LAW, her hyphenated name honoring Lawton Shurtleff’s three children. There is also evidence that Bill Magee of Carnelian Bay ordered a 1929 Gar Wood.

The next several seasons would be lean ones for Obexer, Gar Wood and the world at large. However, it was in 1930 and 1931 that three of Tahoe’s most significant Gar Woods were delivered. One of these was TAMARACK a Scripps-powered triple cockpit model built for Atholl McBean, Chairman of the Newhall Land & Farming Company. Subsequent owners of this 28-footer were TYC Flag Officer Martha Jane King, followed by R. Stanley Dollar, Sr. and more recently Gorham and Diana (Dollar) Knowles.

KAY-VEE, another beautiful triple built in 1930 for Tahoma summer resident C.D. Woods, reflected the same flush-deck styling possible after the introduction of lower profile V12 Scripps engines. This boat’s “vee” windshield signaled a trend toward more aerodynamic styling, reflected elsewhere by lower-profile deck scoops and sidelights.

Though 1931 marked the depths of the Great Depression, Obexer had two clients financially strong enough to commission the construction of distinctive personal boats. The first of these transactions was for DISPATCH, a 33-footer ordered by Arthur K. Bourne for his Roundhill Pines estate on Marla Bay, in the southeast corner of the Lake. With her original 425 hp Liberty V12 engine, this boat had the power to carry Bourne from his geographically distant enclave to any Tahoe location, and when more serious conditions threatened or Bourne’s party required a larger boat MYRNO III, a 50-foot Luders cruiser purchased from automobile magnate Norman DeVaux and renamed REVERIE, fit the bill.

DISPATCH had a second life when Sierra Boat Company General Manager Richard S. “Dick” Clarke located the boat for customer B.C. “Short” Wheeler who had her restored and named her KATHRYN in honor of his wife Kay. Today, sporting her original name once again, the boat belongs to Tom Turner and his wife Maurine of Gar Woods Restaurant in Carnelian Bay.

Obexer’s other 1931 sale was DOROTHY K, a 28-foot triple ordered by Carnelian Bay summer resident Arthur Curtner, scion of a Santa Clara Valley agricultural and real estate dynasty (i.e. Curtner Avenue in San Jose) that commenced with his family’s purchase of property there in 1852. Subsequent owners of DOROTHY K have included Ed and Beth Grebitus, John K. Walker (then owner of Tahoe Boat Co.) and car dealer Richard Niello.

Major Max C. Fleishmann, financier behind UNR’s famed planetarium, was Obexer’s customer in 1931, purchasing a 28-foot sedan that he named TOTO. The boat originally sported a landau top, but when discovered in a mud bank in the Sacramento Delta by Helicopter designer Stanley Hiller, Jr., she had been reduced to a rather forlorn runabout. Hiller had her mortal remains transported to Sierra Boat Company, where the marine artisans then employed there transformed her into a beautiful triple cockpit companion to Hiller’s other Gar Wood, SHEECOG.

SHEECOG, a sedan that took her name from the Washoe word for “skunk,” was originally the plaything of William Wallace Mein, Sr. of Woodside. In summer, Mein occupied a large parcel of Tahoe lakefront along the rounded point of land south of Sunnyside, purchased in 1917 from the widow of William A. Bissell of carpet sweeper fame.

With the world in financial chaos, Obexer recorded no Gar Wood sales during the 1932, 1933 or 1934 seasons. However, in 1935 with sons John and Lawrence (Larry) in their teens, J. Brockway Metcalf placed an order for a 28-foot triple that he named TECOLOTE (Spanish for ‘owl’). Today this boat is still in use by Metcalf descendants.

The 1935 season produced one other remarkable Tahoe Gar Wood, though Obexer was not involved in her acquisition. Henry J. Kaiser, Sr., a Six Companies co-founder and recent arrival on the Tahoe scene, had international connections, and the origins of his boat, HORNET II, are unknown. It was Kaiser’s regatta strategy to enter boats in as many races as possible, and to this end he managed to acquire seven Gar Woods. HORNET II being among a small number of 28-foot hydroplanes produced during this period, according to Gar Wood historian Tony Mollica.

This account describes only about half of Tahoe’s native prewar Gar Woods. Tune in again next issue for the rest of the story.

Find more Tahoe HISTORY at THE Gatekeepers Museum, NLTHS, Tahoe City,  www.northtahoemuseums.org

Carol Van Etten is a long-time student and author of Tahoe history. By conducting Oral History interviews and archival research for the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society and the Tahoe Maritime Museum, she has contributed much to our knowledge of Tahoe in earlier times.