Horse Lake located east of Eagle Lake, is a shallow playa lake covering some 3,500 acres. It is similar in nature to Honey Lake, that both go dry in drought cycles.
Horse Lake was first settled in 1868 by B.E. Shumway. Back then the most direct route from Susanville to Surprise Valley, Modoc County was via Horse Lake. It was at Horse Lake where Lassen County’s first billboard appeared, unlike the ones we know today. Susanville’s pharmacist, Dr.R.F.Moody in the 1870s created his patent medicine Sagebrush Liniment. On a boulder along side the road at Horse Lake he carved into it his famed patent medicine. Decades later when the county widened the road, the boulder was turned over, now face down no longer a billboard.
Sagebrush Liniment! That is too cool.