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Charles Johnston Laird, the first-born child of William Thomas Laird and Sarah (Martin) Laird, was born 16 January 1858 in Sidney, Fremont County, Iowa. When he was about 5, his family traveled by wagon train to California, and they soon settled in Siskiyou County, in that state. By 1880, he and his parents had moved to the site on Willow Creek known as “Laird’s Station.” 1 At the age of 22, Charles took on the job of driving a stage coach over the route from Redding, California, to Ashland, Oregon. (Laird’s Station was a regular stop along this route.) He began this work sometime in 1880, and it came to an end abruptly in December 1887 with the completion of the Oregon & California Railroad over the Siskiyou Pass to Ashland. On that occasion, Charles was photographed with seven of his fellow drivers (see below). Years later, his name was also engraved on a roadside monument that celebrated California stage drivers. That monument still stands along State Highway 299 in Shasta, California, at its intersection with Mackley Alley.
In 1883, through a government sale, Charles acquired 160 acres around the mouth of Willow Creek, adjacent to his father’s land. He apparently sold that off within a few years, though, and then in 1892 bought a ranch on the south edge of Lower Klamath Lake, a ranch which later came to be known as “Laird’s Landing.” Later that year, 26 December 1892, Charles married Elva Catherine (“Kate”) Caster in Siskiyou County. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Marion Caster and Mary Ann (Ensley) Caster. She had been born 25 January 1868 in Van Buren County, Iowa, but as she grew she had moved with her family first to Hickory County, Missouri, then to Mitchell County, Kansas, and finally out to the Siskiyou County area about 1884. They reportedly lived for a time in or near Bogus,2 which was only 7 or 8 miles from Laird’s Station, so that likely is where Charles and Elva met. Elva’s parents had moved on and settled in Medford, Jackson County, Oregon, before Elva was married, and they were living there when Elva’s father died in October 1892. I don’t know whether Elva (who was full grown by then) had moved with them to Medford or stayed behind in Bogus, but she and Charles were married in Bogus two months after her father’s death. After marriage, Charles and Elva moved to his new ranch on Lower Klamath Lake. There they lived together for the next 36 years, and there all four of their children were born:
By the time Charles married, his stage-driving days were mostly behind him, but he was not yet finished with the transportation business. Although the railroad had reached Ashland in 1887, the line up to Klamath Falls, Oregon, could not be completed for several more years. In those days, however, Lower Klamath Lake was deep enough to provide water passage from Klamath Falls to the vicinity of Charles’s ranch. So in 1905, he built a pier and had a channel dredged to his ranch, and thus “Laird’s Landing” came into existence. For the next 4 years, the steamboat Klamath made daily runs between Laird’s Landing and Klamath Falls (50 miles each way), and Charles set up a stage line to carry passengers from Laird’s Landing to the end of the rail line. He also built a hotel to accommodate passengers who had to wait overnight for their stage or steamboat connection. Two photos below show Laird’s Landing at the height of its development.  
Above: View of Laird's Landing, about 1907, showing hotel at left and steamboat approaching the dock at right. Right: Steamboat Klamath docked at Laird's Landing, with coaches waiting to load or unload passengers. (Both photos from The Siskiyou Pioneer in Folklore, Fact and Fiction, 1957, and Yearbook– 1956, v. 2, no. 9, where they were credited to Ray Laird.)
Daily rail service to Klamath Falls began on 20 May 1909, bringing the Lower Klamath Lake steamboat service to an abrupt halt, and ending the role of Laird’s Landing as any sort of waystation or stopover point. Moreover, in 1917, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation redirected the flow of water that had sustained Lower Klamath Lake for thousands of years, and the lake began to dry up. By 1922, what had been an 85,000-acre lake had shrunk to a 365-acre pond. The former dock at Laird’s Landing was left high and dry, 7 miles from the nearest open water. Quite aside from their transportation ventures, Charles, Elva, and their growing children worked over many years to develop their property into one of the most productive cattle ranches in Siskiyou County. Charles lived there the rest of his life and died there on 22 November 1928. Obituaries for him ran in newspapers in both Klamath Falls and Medford, Oregon, for he was well remembered in both places. He was laid to rest at the Eastwood IOOF Cemetery in Medford. Following Charles’s death, Elva continued to manage the ranch, with much help from son Ray. She was in a San Francisco hospital, though, when she passed away on 8 August 1933. According to an obituary in the Oakland Tribune, she had gone there about 3 weeks earlier seeking surgery for “a stomach disorder.” She was also remembered by an obituary in the Medford Mail Tribune, and her body was returned to Medford for burial next to her husband. In 1957, Charles and Elva’s four children collaborated on a memoir telling the history of their parents and Laird’s Landing, and that memoir is reproduced here. The Laird’s Landing Ranch exists to this day (2020) under the management of Charles’s great-granddaughter Lauren Laird. The boat dock, the hotel, and the old homestead are long gone, but the former site is still marked by a search in Google Maps for “Laird Landing, CA”. Also, on an aerial view of the site, the channel that had been dredged for the steamboat Klamath is visible as a depression in the old lakebed. If you can suggest any corrections to the information above or provide any further details about the lives of Charles, Elva, and their descendants, please contact me at the address shown in the image below:
Thanks,
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