In February 1890, San Francisco resident, Albert Gallatin who owned ranching properties at Eagle and Horse Lakes in Lassen County penned the following opinion piece for the Lassen Advocate:
“When the waters of Lassen County which have heretofore run to waste, shall be utilized for irrigation, when the sage brush plains shall be reclaimed, when tens of thousands of barrels of apples from Horse and Honey Lake valleys shall became a large item of east and west bound freight, when tens of thousands of tons of alfalfa shall be produced from what has heretofore been considered worthless land, and fed to beef cattle for San Francisco and Chicago markets, when your city shall be located on one of the overland railroads, when your immense timber forest shall have been converted into merchantable lumber and transported over one or more overland railroads to market, when Eagle Lake, the Geneva of the Sierras, shall be connected with the outside world by railroad and shall become one of the finest summer resorts of the Pacific Coast, with sail and steam yachts, mountain trails and drives and all the auxiliaries for hunting and fishing, then may Susanville assume metropolitan airs and rival any city from the Sierras to the Rocky Mountains.
“While this picture is largely overdrawn for the present, it will in my judgment be to a greater extent realized before the year 1900.”