Rattlesnake Island: Your Own Inland Empire

As private islands go, it’s huge: 54 acres complete with ancient Indian ceremonial sites, a herd of goats and Barbados sheep, an oak grove worthy of a George Lucas Jedi battle scene, peregrine falcons and 8,000 feet of lakefront.

Even for California, it’s relatively high priced: A dog-bone-shaped parcel floating in Clear Lake near the middle of the state, it’s on the market for $5.75 million, though realtor/owner Paul Dennett admits that he and his partners “are willing to be chiseled down to about $4 million.”

Although the asking price has raised eyebrows in real estate circles, Dennett points out that the still-primitive property--about a 2 1/2-hour drive northeast of San Francisco in Lake County--is the largest inland island on the West Coast.

The partners were able to purchase it at a bargain rate of “less than half a million dollars,” he says, because the corporation which previously owned it was under court order to divest some of its properties.

Although Dennett, his family and some neighbors have owned Rattlesnake Island since 1976, none of the owners has resided there for longer than a brief camp-out. They all live on other, far-smaller islands in Clear Lake.

The only inhabitants have been a succession of caretakers and occasionally some Pomo Indians from the nearby lakefront reservation, who dispute the partners’ title to the island. The Indians maintain that Rattlesnake Island--which reportedly has no rattlesnakes--was originally part of their land and was stolen from them by the federal government. They acknowledge, however, that there’s little likelihood they will win the land back anytime soon as they can’t afford to take the matter to court.

Dennett, who calls the Indians “good neighbors,” has nonetheless posted “No Trespassing” signs on the island where he played as a child during family vacations in the 1930s.

Even though as a kid he always dreamed of living on one of Clear Lake’s islands, he says that “people who live on islands have to be, I don’t know, a little weird.”

In fact, Dennett’s first wife lasted only about three years on nearby Windflower Island before packing up her belongings and leaving the island and the marriage.

Dennett and his second wife, Helen, have lived on 2 1/2-acre Windflower since 1968. For several years they resided in a makeshift one-room house Dennett built with his uncle. It had no electricity until 1979, and baths were taken in the lake or by bucket.

Rugged Rusticity

Moreover, the Dennetts say, it was in that one-room house that they reared their six children (two of his, four of hers) from previous marriages. If that seems like privation to most people, they see it differently. By the time each child was in kindergarten, for instance, he or she had learned to swim, ski and drive a boat across the lake to catch the school bus.

By 1979, the Dennetts had completed building a much larger and, by all accounts, stunning home on Windflower Island, doing everything themselves except for installing the kitchen cabinets and carpeting. (He holds a degree in structural engineering, with a minor in architecture, from UC Berkeley.)

So enthralled is the couple with their small, secluded world (from which they venture only on rare occasions) that they never change their clocks to daylight-saving time. And they no longer own a car, preferring to take a boat or a seaplane.

Time to Move On

Dennett claims he’d like to keep Rattlesnake Island for his family but can’t afford to buy out his partners. Needed was a new dream. So Dennett and his wife decided to sell Rattlesnake Island, possibly also Windflower Island and their home (unofficially on the market for $1.5 million) and explore more of the world’s islands, most likely in Micronesia and the Caribbean.

“We’ve been playing with the island for several years and just decided it’s time to get on with a new adventure,” says Dennett. Adds Helen, who still sleeps outdoors with her husband every night under a canopy at the edge of the island, “Our idea of getting away is to go someplace that’s more primitive than this. We want a shack someplace on the water.”

How does one go about selling an island?

Celebrity Pitch

Dennett figures the place is perfect for show-biz stars looking for a secluded retreat that can be reached quickly by air (it’s about a 45-minute helicopter or seaplane ride from the San Francisco and Sacramento airports). So he’s sent material pitching the island to about 600 celebrities.

Thus far the stars have remained largely unmoved by the mailing, but Dennett says he did get a nice, handwritten reply from Charlton Heston. And Malcolm Forbes, a fellow island owner, responded by “inviting us to his island off Fiji.”

A classified advertisement in Islands magazine brought about 50 inquiries. And at the moment, Dennett says, a Middle-Eastern investment firm is seriously interested.

For all the island’s raw charm, however, it may not be a snap to sell. For one thing, belying its name, Clear Lake is not clear. Even Dennett says it sometimes emits a less than pleasant odor.

Warm-Water Lake

“The lake is not polluted,” explains Clear Lake real estate appraiser Michael E. Boyd. “Its bacterial content is less than that of Lake Tahoe. But Clear Lake is a warm-water lake as opposed to an alpine lake. It has algae growth which sometimes blooms and then it rots and then has an odor.” Boyd declined to offer an appraiser’s view of the asking price for Rattlesnake Island, saying that it’s unethical for appraisers to give an evaluation on a property without doing a complete study.

But Ted Karg, a real etate agent with the area’s Lakeside Properties, thinks the price sounds a bit high. “I think they’re reaching,” he says, “but who knows? There might be somebody out there eccentric enough to buy an island for that kind of money. It has no sewer--you’d have to run one out there, but it has some possibilities.” Relative to other islands on the market, Rattlesnake is at the high end. Michael Forrest, author of “Islands for Sale,” an article in the current issue of Islands magazine, considers the $5.7-million asking price for Rattlesnake Island “exorbitant.”

“There was an island recently sold off the coast of Connecticut for $5.5 million. That’s about the tops I’ve heard of for private island prices. (The Connecticut island) was about eight or 10 acres, had a huge mansion on it, a park, a swimming pool and was connected to the mainland via a road built out onto the ocean.”

Forrest observes today’s market is awash with lower-priced islands for sale. “There are islands available that even I could afford, charming things. There was a beautiful island on Lake Superior with a little cabin on it for $30,000. It was easy to get to but it would have been a little cold in the winter.”

To Dennett, it’s only logical that islands in cold climates sell for less than those in California.

Though Rattlesnake Island is blessed with relatively warm winters, there are still potential problems with the Indians. Members of the Elem Indian Colony, part of the Pomo tribe, still claim the island and insist on defending it from development, according to former Elem tribe director Jim Brown.

‘Our Aboriginal Home’

“We’ve always used the island. It literally is our aboriginal home, from before the 1800s,” says Brown, now the director of the Indian Health Services in Lake County. “There is archeological evidence of ceremonial houses and village sites on the island. There are burial grounds there that go back 4,000 years. . . . We have a lot of medicine people, including myself, who still continue to gather medicine (plants) from the island.”

Furthermore, Brown contends that Rattlesnake Island is reservation soil--created in the 1920s when the county installed a dam which backed up water and created the island from part of the reservation. “We feel that land was illegally taken by the government and sold,” Brown says.

Over the years, things have been relatively serene between the Elem and Dennett and other owners of Rattlesnake Island.

“Our people are peaceful,” says Brown, who warns, however, that if people begin developing Rattlesnake Island, his people “will go over there and get themselves arrested. . . . If we have to get arrested or shot, we’re going to do it. This is our last cultural resource that’s available to us . . . and we can rally a lot of non-Indian support.”

Federal Backing

Dennett, too, hopes the land is never developed beyond someone putting a house on the property. That’s why he’s hoping to sell Rattlesnake to a movie star or someone who will use it for their own purposes. But he doesn’t see the Indians’ claim as a serious problem.

“I’m sure they’d like to have all of that land back, along with all of Lake County and maybe all of California,” he says. “But times have changed. Our current title is backed and insured by a clear chain of title all the way to the federal land patent. If there’s an argument it’s not with us; it’s with the federal government.”

The island is zoned “unclassified”--which means a buyer could erect multifamily dwellings or a resort complex.

But Dennett seems confident that “archeologically sensitive” sites will be left undisturbed:

“We bought the island in good faith and we intend to sell it in good faith. If anybody does any building, they will do something that fits the land, rather than restructure the land to fit a building. It’s just too rare a piece of property to destroy or to damage by any land alteration. Whatever’s done out there can be done in harmony with the land and without disturbing any of the archeological sites.”