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Levi H. Tower (1819-1865), born in Cumberland, RI, worked as a machinist in a US Armory in Springfield, MA, until he left the East Coast sailing around the Cape Horn bound for San Francisco, CA. He arrived in San Francisco in 06/1849, just as news of gold's discovery hit town. He departed himself for the Trinity County gold mines a year later. By 1852, he had assembled enough money to buy Schneider’s Trading Post at the intersection of the Clear and Crystal Creek in Shasta County. He paid $575 for the property and set about converting the landmark into a three-story hotel, the grandest inn and meeting place in the county. At its height, the Tower House had 21 rooms and extensive fruit orchards, berry-bearing vines, and ornamental and vegetable gardens. Joel N. Fowler described the inn and its grounds: "Tower turned the Tower House into the county showplace and popular stopping place and social center, well known for its excellent accommodations and lavish menus. He planted beautiful flower gardens, orchards, vegetable gardens and the first peach trees north of Sacramento. His orchard was the largest north of Marysville with trees brought from Oregon, around the Horn and the Isthmus of Panama. The grounds contained 1,000 trees of apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines (oldest planted in 1854), 400 grapevines, a nursery of 1,000 assorted fruit trees, adding gooseberries, currants, raspberries and strawberries in 1858." (See Joel N. Fowler, "Levi H. Tower of the Tower House,"Accessed 09/05/2012/) As a comfortable hotel and prominent local landmark, the California-Oregon Stage Company chose it as a stop in 1858.

Levi Tower's Tower House Hotel (built in the 1850s) formed part of a National Register Historic District formed in the 1970s that also included the Bickford Mine, barns, bridges and houses.

Demolished; a fire destroyed the Tower House in 1919.

PCAD id: 17595