Tony Burton

Tony Burton's books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran"), "Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008). Amazon Author Page                                          Facebook Page

Aug 142025
 

Nebraska-based photographer and journalist Jack Bailey (1901-1977) made numerous trips to Mexico in the course of his career. An article he wrote in 1964, while visiting friends in Guadalajara, is the only currently known mention of an obscure and (perhaps mercifully) long forgotten publication named the Chapala Blade.

In several articles, Bailey included detailed descriptions of many other aspects of life at Lake Chapala. The titles of the articles are, in themselves, a giveaway of Bailey’s prime focus: they include “American Colony Grows At Lake Chapala: Beautiful Monotony,” “Haven for Retired Americans,” “A Most Delightful Setting – Holiday Paradise Called Chapala,” and “An American Colony Has Sprung Up on the Shores of Lake Chapala.”

Strangely, however, almost all the photographs illustrating these articles are of other parts of Mexico, not Lake Chapala. The prime exception is this image of a modern residence in Chula Vista.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 11 Mar 1965, p12.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 11 Mar 1965, p12.

Reporter-photographer and businessman Jack Bailey was born in Denver, Colorado, on 27 April 1901, and died, following a heart attack, on 20 February 1977, while attending an Arizona State Photographers’ meeting at the Grand Canyon. He began his newspaper career on the Kansas City Journal and the Omaha Bee News before moving to Grand Island, Nebraska, in 1930 to work for the Grand Island Independent, where he went from reporter and feature writer to wire editor and, from 1950, the paper’s first “roving reporter.”

Alongside his journalistic work, Bailey opened his own photographic studio in Grand Island in 1941, and developed other business interests. Bailey and his wife, Bobbie Wasson, visited Europe in 1960 for six months. In January 1963, Bailey announced plans to spend several months in Mexico, saying that, while they had been south of the border several times before, they wanted to explore more: “This time we will seek out more of the quaint, unusual places which the average tourist misses.”

Their provisional itinerary included Querétaro, Veracruz, Acapulco, Taxco, Pátzcuaro, Morelia, Uruapan, Jocotepec, Ajijic, Chapala, Guadalajara, San Blas and Mazatlán.

Bailey’s first article about the Lake Chapala area, datelined Jocotepec, was published in March 1963, while he was staying at Granja Azul, which he describes as “one of those quaint motels which few Americans find because it is off the beaten track. Only one person speaks English and she is an elderly lady who learned when she was a child and never forgot.” The Granja Azul cost 110 pesos ($8.oo) a day per couple, including three meals!

Bailey revisited the area for extended visits the following two years. Here are a selection of excerpts from his various articles related to the area:

Sailboats seem to float lazily on the smooth blue waters while fishermen in row boats appear almost dormant as they wait for their nets to fill with the white fish for which the lake is famous…. [around Lake Chapala] hundreds of Americans have come to build their homes, remodel Mexican adobe huts and spend the rest of their lives. Faces of Americans are almost as common as those of Mexicans in this condensed section of Mexico.”

In Jocotepec, at the weekly Sunday paseo (serenade), “The boys and girls team up by twos and threes and walk around the plaza in opposite directions eyeing one another as they go. The parents fill the benches on the sidelines and watch their children seek a boy or girl who may later become an in-law.”

Ajijic

Ajijic “is strictly an Indian village with adobe block homes and cobblestone streets…. Years ago it became a gathering place for writers, artists seeking refuge from the outside world. Many of these have since left and now it is regaining its previous charm. There is one writer who remained, however, and she has created a square block wilderness of beauty where she lives, writes and has a tourist shop…. Her name is Neal [Neill] James and she has written a number of books.”

Bailey considered her home, with its “huge murals painted on some of the walls”, and her yard (open to the public), which was a jungle of bananas, papayas and many other unusual trees and shrubs, “well worth driving miles out of your way to see.”

Bailey had a word of caution for anyone thinking of moving to Ajijic:

[Many Americans] must drown their loneliness – which they refuse to admit – with drink…. Once one drives through the village of Ajijic he will understand why. The Americano’s home–a beautiful structure-is surrounded on all sides by the small drab nondescript homes of the natives who live on a few hundred pesos a year. The adobe huts are depressing and no matter in which direction the Americano looks he sees poverty while by comparison he is living in the lap of luxury…. It is depressing to say the least. And the sad part about it is promoters are luring retired Americans to come here and live.”

Chula Vista

In 1963, Bailey reported that modest five-room homes in Chula Vista could be purchased for $4,500 and six-room homes with three bedrooms for $5,000. A year later, he revised these prices upwards to between $8,000 and $20,000, and described Chula Vista, where “the other half lives,” as:

a community of between 40 and 50 families built on the side of a hill overlooking the lake… composed primarily of retired people who have come down here to spend the declining years of their lives. The village is well laid out with hard surfaced streets, a good street lighting system and a deep well which furnishes plenty of good drinking water as well as plenty for their lawns and gardens.”

By 1965, Chula Vista had about “90 homes built on the side of a mountain overlooking Lake Chapala…. The residents are all citizens of the United States, who have moved here to retire. The residents include retired army colonels and generals, business executives. retail store operators and a few federal employees on substantial pensions.”

If one had to take a choice between Ajijic and Chula Vista there is no question about which place we would choose. It would be Chula Vista because there most of the residents are in the same social strata and the poverty of the Indians is missing. We could not see how anyone could live in Ajijic beside the backward fishermen who barely eke out a living. Such a climate would quickly turn us into social workers so we could help them raise their standard of living.”

Chapala

Visiting Chapala in late February, Bailey commented that, “The beach was filled with swimmers; speedboats racing by sent waves rolling shoreward and young lovers rode the crests in small canoes.”

Bailey appreciated the dozens of beautiful lakefront homes in Chapala, “by taking the boat trip which hugs the shoreline,” but was especially enamored of the town’s rose gardens:

Chapala is famous for its roses and it is doubtful if roses anywhere grow more profusely than they do in the parkway along the lake front. The parkway runs for several blocks and is filled with nothing but roses. Many of the flowers are almost as large as plates and it is not uncommon to see from 20 to 25 blooms on a single bush. Almost every variety and color can be found in the Chapala parkway. The city has been cultivating and breeding these roses for years.”

On the other hand, he lamented, while sitting on the pier and watching visitors go by, how:

Some of the garbs worn by the female members of the tourist clan not only caused other tourists to gasp in amazement but caused the natives also to turn their heads and choke back a laugh. The crazy outfits aren’t confined to women alone. Many men, with their pot bellies, don outlandish colored shorts, jackets of purple and red and a type of sombrero a Mexican wouldn’t be caught wearing at midnight.”

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Sources

  • The Grand Island Independent: 29 Jan 1963, 1; 8 Mar 1963, 3; 9 Mar 1963, 3; 11 Mar 1963, 10; 30 Mar 1964, 16; 21 February 1977, 1.
  • Jack Bailey. 1964. American Colony Grows At Lake Chapala: Beautiful Monotony.” The Grand Island Independent, 23 Mar 1964, 20.
  • Jack Bailey. 1964. “Haven for Retired Americans.” The Grand Island Independent, 1 April 1964, 27.
  • Jack Bailey. 1965. “A Most Delightful Setting – Holiday Paradise Called Chapala.” The Grand Island Independent, 3 April 1965, 9.
  • Jack Bailey. 1965. “An American Colony Has Sprung Up on the Shores of Lake Chapala.” The Grand Island Independent, 5 April 1965, 13.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Aug 072025
 

Some curious travel posters, purporting to be ‘photorealistic’ images of Ajijic, are currently (August 2025) listed on eBay. Each is available in a variety of prices and sizes, ranging from $5 for 4 x 6″ to $49 for 36 x 48″.

Here is the first of the two images currently listed:

eBay, July 2025

Image from an eBay listing, August 2025.

This pretty (but fictional) composition, is accompanied by an equally imaginative description:

Immerse yourself in the vibrant colors and charm of Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico with this exquisite travel poster. The narrow street is alive with the rich hues of red, orange, and blue buildings, offering a scenic glimpse into a picturesque small-town setting. Lush potted plants line the walkway, while a distant bell tower and majestic mountains paint a stunning backdrop. Vintage-style street lamps add a touch of nostalgia, enhancing the timeless allure of this cultural haven.

The second image is, in my opinion, more bizarre, showing a tropical Venice-like scene at sunset:

eBay, July 2025

Image from an eBay listing, August 2025.

Its description is equally imaginative:

Experience the captivating beauty of Ajijic, Jalisco, through this exquisite sunset poster. The art showcases a stylized, serene waterfront town, with small boats gently nestled against the shimmering water. Towering mountains grace the horizon, enveloped in warm oranges and reds, creating a nostalgic tropical ambiance. Framed by tall palm trees, this vintage-inspired design exudes an exotic charm, reminiscent of classic travel posters. The mood is welcoming and tranquil, promising a peaceful escape into nature’s beauty.

What is the online world coming to? Are some people really so dissatisfied with Lake Chapala’s natural beauty and local architecture that they need to create such ‘innovative’ representations for tourists? Or are these images the consequence of AI gone rogue?

If you want to do the visual arts at Lake Chapala a service, support the many genuine (human) artists and artisans!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Jul 312025
 

Martin Dreyer (1909-2001) and his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Webb Dreyer (1911-1976), spent several weeks in Ajijic in 1962. The Dreyers, both established artists, had opened a joint gallery in Houston a few years earlier. Martin’s entertaining account of their stay in Ajijic is an interesting read.

Martin Dreyer was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1909, graduated from Northwestern University in Chicago, and died in Houston, Texas in 2001. His writing was first published in the 1930s, with short stories appearing in Esquire Magazine and several editions of Best Short Stories of the Year. He moved to Houston in 1940, and joined the staff of the Houston Chronicle in 1944. For about thirty years he combined reporting, feature writing and investigative journalism with travel articles.

In Houston, Martin met and married Margaret Lee Webb, who was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1911. From about 1960 to 1975, they ran Dreyer Galleries, their joint gallery in Houston, where they exhibited the works of many important Texas and Latin American artists, alongside related historical artifacts. The Dreyers were noted for their social activism, and their gallery raised the profile of many female and African American artists. (It also led to interactions with the Ku Klux Klan and a bullet hole in the front door, but that’s another story.)

Margaret studied at art at the University of Texas, Austin; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.

The Dreyers’ son, Thorne Webb Dreyer, has ensured that this parents’ artistic achievements and legacy live on today. For more about Margaret’s life and work, see, for instance,”A tribute to Maggie, my mother” and his mother’s Wikipedia entry. Thorne’s summary of his father’s life and work is online as Martin Dreyer’s biography on AskART.

Martin exhibited in numerous group exhibits, including Houston Artists Exhibitions (1943-1945), Texas General Exhibitions (1943-1945), Dallas Museum of Fine Art (1949), Houston Museum of Fine Arts (1951), and the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston (in the 1950s). Margaret’s work also featured in numerous group shows, including Houston Artists Annual Exhibitions, Texas General Exhibitions, Texas Watercolor Society showings, and the Contemporary Arts Association (1957) and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Her work won several major exhibition prizes, and she completed mosaic murals at Madding School, Houston (1966), Face of Cavallini Building, San Antonio (1966) and Face of Crawford Building, Houston (1967). Posthumous solo exhibits of her work were held at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1977) and at the University of St. Thomas (1979).

Our focus here is on Martin’s account of their stay in Ajijic.

Jacques Van Belle. ca. 1960. Hotel Laguna, Ajijic.

Jacques Van Belle. ca. 1960. Hotel Laguna (later Hotel Anita), Ajijic.

Martin Dreyer’s entertaining account of their time in the “intrigue-charged Mexican village of Ajijic,” (“A Visit to Bohemia Below the Border”) is based on the recently opened inn where they stayed, an inn “built around a Spanish courtyard bursting with flowers and a flourishing papaya tree.” The inn’s landlady was “a bit dumpy, with a handsome face and black flashing eyes. A refined, matronly type.” A friend later explained that their hostess had previously been “One of the leading madams in Guadalajara.”

Dreyer paints a quick picture of the village, recognizing that initial impressions were not very encouraging:

Ajijic, an ancient Tarascan fishing village on the shores of Lake Chapala, is a colorful hangout for artists, writers and other American expatriates. Some of them drink it up and live it up to the tail end of their income. An occasional suicide marks the end of the road.”
. . .
On first sight of Ajijic you might not want a second sight. The narrow, cobblestoned streets are lined with dreary looking adobe houses. Indians squat around, cattle block your car and packs of mongrels yap and slink away. But if you hang around you’re in for a surprise. There’s a dream quality to this village beneath its green mountain range. And behind the adobe walls are flowerlush patios, colorful art studios and cosy apartments.”

Inevitably, the Dreyers were drawn to frequent the “Galleria” [La Galería], the gallery-bar near the plaza, where they joined the local Bohemian crowd in “an ancient building with floor-to-ceiling windows and modern paintings and sculpture adding eeriness to the candle-lit rooms.” One evening, while they were having a drink there, a flash flood swept down the street (calle Colón) from the mountains:

We sat in the flickering room, with sculptured faces peering at us from the shadows, and brooded over our assorted transgressions. The tequila drinks went a long way to easing the pain.”

Dreyer also tells the story of a “beautiful and shabby girl” living at the “deserted old mill in Ajijic used as a pad by a group of beatnik artists and writers.” She was in tears because she had just had a play accepted by a movie company. But tragedy followed. “Later, we heard, the deal was off. Later she shot herself.”

In addition to La Galería, Dreyer found that “A favorite hangout of the retirees was the home of a woman called Margot. High thick arches and tile floors on different levels, tasty arrangement of fine paintings and pre-Columbian sculpture, a hi-fi system’s swelling of superior music through the rooms.”

And, as Dreyer comments, Ajijic inspired art and creativity:

Painters find colorful subject matter everywhere. My wife went to the beach to sketch. Small boys – dark-eyed and fine-featured – gathered all sides and pushed close and all wanted to be in the picture. And all wanted to go to the States.”

After three weeks in Ajijic, as the Dreyers were packing the car for the long drive home, they gave the landlady a small bottle of perfume as a present. The landlady insisted they return inside the inn where she gifted them some hand embroidery. After Margaret responded with “some bath towels from the States,” the landlady immediately gave her an alpaca evening bag. The gift of one of Margaret’s small recent watercolors was matched by some dangling earrings. Then the ‘señor’ who helped run the inn appeared. It was Martin’s turn. In his immortal concluding words: “I gave him an old Army canteen. He presented me with a hand-carved wooden figure. We got in the car, said ‘Adios, amigos,’ and drove off before they could give us the inn.”

Somewhere in Ajijic is an original watercolor by Margaret Dreyer . . . .

Please get in touch if you know of any Margaret Dreyer or Martin Dreyer paintings related to Lake Chapala.

Aside: The inn the Dreyers stayed at was the Hotel Anita, which occupied a once extensive property (since subdivided into three) west of Ajijic plaza on the east side of Calle Juárez, between Hidalgo and Zaragoza. The hotel first opened in the mid-1950s as the Hotel Laguna, and was renamed Hotel Anita following its purchase in the early 1960s by Anita Chávez de Basulto (‘La Muñeca’). Noteworthy guests at Hotel Anita included prison muralist and artist Alfredo Santos. The Hotel Anita closed in about 1965. It reopened two years later as the Hotel Villa del Lago, which lasted only until about 1970.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
The history of Hotel Anita is in chapter 32 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village. Other chapters in that book explain the genesis and development of the literary and artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Martin Dreyer. 1962. “A Visit to Bohemia Below the Border.” Houston Chronicle, 8 April 1962, 11, 13.
  • Janette Rodrigues. 2001. “Former travel editor Martin Dreyer dies.” Houston Chronicle, 13 March 2001.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jul 242025
 

Mark Coomer (1914-2004) was a much traveled and highly successful commercial artist whose varied works over a long professional career continue to show up regularly at auction.

He jumped onto my radar because of a news clipping from 1955 attesting to him donating a painting of “a Mexican market scene near Ajijic, Jalisco, on Lake Chapala” to his former high school. The clipping explained that the painting had been completed “the previous summer.” Judging by a very grainy newspaper photograph, his 1955 Ajijic work was somewhat similar, in size and style, to “The Fruit Stand” (undated) which came up at auction in 2013.

Mark Coomer. Undated. "The Fruit Stand."

Mark Coomer. Undated. “The Fruit Stand.” Auctioned by The Sell It Now Store in 2013.

Markets clearly appealed to Coomer as subject matter. Another watercolor, “Market in Jalisco,” perhaps based on the same trip when he visited Ajijic, won top honors at the 1957 Arizona State Fair and was named “Painting of the Year.”

Ad, Cinncinati Enquirer, 4 December, 1955

Ad, Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 December, 1955

Mark Allen Coomer was the son of Dr. and Mrs Ward E. Coomer of Bay City, Michigan. He attended Handy High School, where his art teacher was Miss Irene Tryon.

The Ajijic market painting had been completed at the artist’s studio in Galena, Illinois. It was painted in black and white casein paint, to which oil colors had then been applied. The entire painting had been coated with a “plastic protective glaze” which made the painting washable. Coomer almost invariably prepared his own custom frames; the frame for this painting was “weathered wood” from a 60-year-old barn in Wisconsin.

After high school, Coomer continued his art studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and with Paul Honore, a noted Detroit mural painter. In addition to working in several different locations in the U.S., Coomer also loved to travel overseas.

His first recorded solo show (of watercolors) was at Woodmere Gallery in Philadelphia in 1945. His work was included in the 15th Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago at the Art Institute in 1946, and he exhibited regularly in Chicago and other cities.

His early exhibitions, mostly of watercolors, included paintings of Cape Ann and the Atlantic Coast, and of Mexican scenes, painted during the winter of 1946-47, when he visited Taxco. He revisited Taxco and Mexico City in 1950.

In 1951 he was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to go to Europe and paint pictures of the Air Force in action. By this time, demand was such that he was using some of his original works to make serigraphs (limited edition prints on silk). He also produced many washable prints that were made on Masonite.

The multi-talented Coomer became particularly well known for urban scenes, village scenes and portraits. Besides making his own bespoke frames, he also did some work for the Evansville Courier & Press, illustrated books, fabrics and furniture, and completed several mural assignments.

Coomer spent his later life in Arizona, and died in Prescott, Arizona, in 2004.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • The Bay City Times (Michigan): 20 November 1955, 3.
  • The Arizona Republic: 15 March 1959, 40.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jul 172025
 

The rich literary history of Lake Chapala over the past 130 years is exemplified by the extraordinary diversity of short stories that have used the lake as their setting or backdrop. This post considers some of the noteworthy twentieth century examples.

Terry-map-Chapala

This map in Terry’s Mexico handbook for Travellers (1909) helped persuade D. H. Lawrence to visit Chapala.

The earliest short story (English or Spanish) set, or partially set, at Lake Chapala I currently know of is “The Sorceress: How an American Engineer was Sacrificed to the Aztec Gods,” written by U.S.-born civil engineer Edwin Hall Warner (1858-1927) and published in The Argonaut in 1894. The story is set in La Barca, which was on the eastern shore of the lake prior to the massive land reclamation scheme of the early twentieth century which cost Lake Chapala roughly one-third of its historic surface area.

In 1900, The Argonaut also published “The White Rebozo. A Vision of the Night on the Mystic Waters of Lake Chapala,” by Gwendolyn Overton (1874-1978). Something of a literary prodigy, Overton had previously written several other short stories set in Mexico, and wrote several well-received novels.

Author, poet and diplomat José de Olivares wrote “Mexico’s Beautiful Inland Sea,” an apparently fictionalized account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala, published in 1901. The article’s illustrations include an early photograph of the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala.

The talented writer Charles Fleming Embree (1874-1905), author of A Dream of a Throne, the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala (and written while on his honeymoon), was well known in U.S. literary circles for his short stories. Embree’s “The Guiltless Thieves,” published in 1902, includes mentions of Chapala and neighboring locations.

José Rafael Rubio wrote a prize-winning short story set at Lake Chapala in Spanish in 1907 titled “El hombre doble.” An English version of the story was published a few years later in San Francisco-based Town Talk, as “Not Guilty.” It is the well-crafted story of a man accused of murder who claims to his lawyer that he was merely a witness to the crime.

The earliest short story related to Lake Chapala with an ecological dimension is “José la garza morena” (“José the Great Blue Heron”), written by José López Portillo y Rojas (1850-1923), and published in Cosmos (a monthly Mexico City magazine) in 1912. It is a tale about someone finding a heron that has been shot and wounded, and their efforts to save it.

Nature and travel writer Emma-Lindsay Squier (1892-1941) visited Lake Chapala in the 1920s, while spending several months in Guadalajara. She later wrote “The Little Lost Stars of Chapala,” a short story based on a local legend, which was published in Good Housekeeping.

Guadalajara poet Idella Purnell‘s “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala,” a charming story written for a juvenile audience, was first published in 1936 in American Junior Red Cross News. The story was reprinted in El Ojo del Lago in December 2001.

American journalist, poet and author Clifford Gessler (1893-1979) included a chapter about Chapala in Pattern of Mexico, published in 1941. This chapter was repackaged as a short story titled “The Haunted Lake,” in Mexican Life the following year.

Harvard-educated William Standish Stone (1905-1970) wrote many short stories and several books. The protagonist in “La Soñadora” (The Dreamer), his 1947 short story about the impacts of an epidemic in Ajijic, is inexorably drawn deep into the villagers’ world of intrigue, sorcery, and witchcraft.

In the early 1950s, established novelist Glendon Swarthout (1918-1992) spent six months in Ajijic with his wife, Kathryn, and their 5-year-old son, Miles. Swarthout. A few years later, Swarthout published “Ixion,” a short story set at Lake Chapala. Miles Swarthout became a successful screenwriter and turned “Ixion” into an unpublished screenplay titled Convictions of the Heart.

Novelist Elaine Gottlieb (1916-2004) lived for several months in Ajijic in the second half of 1946, soon after her first novel, Darkling, was accepted for publication. Based on her time in Ajijic, Gottlieb wrote a short story titled “Passage Through Stars,” published in 1959.

Writer, poet and movie producer Hans Oppenheimer was living in Ajijic in 1964 when he his short story, “The Value of the Ear,” was published by the prestigious Southwest Review. While the storyline is unrelated to the lake, several other Lake Chapala-based authors had work published in Southwest Review over the years, including Paul Alexander Bartlett, Willard “Butch” Marsh, and Witter Bynner, whose poem “Beach at Chapala” was published by the magazine in 1947.

Artist and writer Allyn Hunt (1931-2002), who had taken a creative writing class at the University of Southern California given by Willard Marsh, settled in the Lake Chapala area in the 1960s. Hunt and his wife later bought the Guadalajara Reporter, which Hunt edited and published for more than 20 years. Several of his tightly written short stories were published in the Transatlantic Review, including “A Mole’s Coat,” about doing acid ‘jaunts’ at Lake Chapala.

If you know of, or come across, other early short stories about the lake, please get in touch!

Note: Lovers of short prose might also enjoy the short novel set at Lake Chapala written by Frank Herbert (1920-1986), author of Dune, who had accompanied his friend Jack Vance to Chapala in 1953. Herbert’s 18,000-word novella, exploring interactions between Mexicans and Americans, was unpublished during his lifetime, but was released by his estate as an ebook titled A Thorn in the Bush in 2014.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Charles Embree. 1902. “The Guiltless Thieves.” National Advocate, 12 July 1902.
  • Clifford F. Gesler. 1942. “The Haunted Lake.” Mexican Life, June 1932, 13-1.
  • Elaine Gottlieb. 1959. “Passage Through Stars.” Noonday #2, 80-93.
  • Allyn Hunt. 1969. “A Mole’s Coat.” The Transatlantic Review, Summer 1969.
  • José López Portillo y Rojas. 1912. “José la garza morena.” Cosmos (Mexico City), June 1912.
  • José de Olivares. 1901. “Mexico’s Beautiful Inland Sea.” The Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 2 June 1901, 32.
  • Hans Oppenheimer. 1964. “The Value of the Ear,” Southwest Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 1964), 174-178.
  • Gwendolen Overton. 1900. “The White Rebozo.” The Argonaut (San Francisco), 23 July 1900, 4.
  • Idella Purnell. 1936. “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala.” American Junior Red Cross News, December 1936.
  • José Rafael Rubio. 1911. “Not guilty.” Town Talk (the Pacific Weekly), 16 December 1911.
  • Emma-Lindsay Squier. 1928. “The Little Lost Stars of Chapala.” Good Housekeeping, Vol 87 #2 (August 1928), 98-101, 206, 209-212.
  • William S. Stone. “La Soñadora,” Mexican Life, March 1947, 13-14, 74-84.
  • Glendon Swarthout. 1958. “Ixion.” New World Writing #13. Mentor.
  • Edwin Hall Warner. 1894. “The Sorceress : How an American Engineer was Sacrificed to the Aztec Gods.The Argonaut (San Francisco), Vol. XXXV. No. 2 (July, 1894), 4.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Jul 102025
 

Stuart Phillips (1901-1981) had work included in a group show in Ajijic in 1971, some years after he retired from an executive position in Chicago. Details of his art education and training are currently unknown.

Stuart Phillips. 1967. Summer.

Stuart Phillips. 1967. Summer. (Location unknown) Reproduced by kind permission of Shanna W. Sellers.

Stuart Grosvenor Stapleton Phillips was born 6 November 1901 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland to an English father and Scottish mother. His elder brother, George Henry Robert Trone Phillips, had been born in Scotland. According to an obituary Stuart entered the British Civil Service and later emigrated to Canada where he gained an LLB from the University of Manitoba and was admitted to the bar.

He then worked in Chicago, Illinois, where he became engaged to Christine Barbara Young (1903-1987) in December 1929. They married in Chicago on 8 March 1930 and had four children: Stuart Y. Phillips (born 1932); Christine Lillian Phillips, later Portoghese (1937–2004); Douglas G. Phillips (born 1940); and Constance Ada Phillips, later Kappel (born 1942). Phillips applied to become a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1942, and his petition was granted in October 1943.

Stuart Phillips worked most of his career with the Dole Valve Company of Chicago. In 1935, when he was Dole’s advertising manager, he was elected president of the Illinois Engineering Advertisers’ association. He ended his career at Dole as company vice-president.

Invitation card for Fiesta de Arte, 15 May 1971.

From about 1938 onward, Philips was an active member of the Austin, Oak Park and River Forest Art league. He helped organize studio galleries for the league in 1938, and showed works in the league’s summer series of shows in 1942, and in the league’s show of water colors and drawings in 1945. In the league’s Spring Show in 1952, Phillips’ painting “Low Tide” received an honorable mention. Later that year, he and his wife visited Europe, returning to the U.S. in early August.

Though he usually went by “Stuart G. Phillips,” it seems likely that he is the same “Stuart Phillips” who had paintings in the 1957 and 1958 Chicago Artists Exhibitions, non-juried exhibitions open to all artists living in the region, and sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago in cooperation with the then Mayor of the city, Richard J. Daley. Phillips had two works in the 1957 exhibition: “Receding Planes” and “Outer Drive,” and one titled “No 179″ in the 1958 show. Also exhibiting in both shows was Emil Armin (1883-1971), whose 1957 submission was a painting of Chapala.

Phillips retired from his business career in 1960. Shortly afterwards he and his wife moved to Lake Chapala, where they lived in the subdivision of Chula Vista, at Avenida del Parque #136.

The only record of Phillips displaying his work at Lake Chapala was in the large group show called Fiesta de Arte, held at the residence of Mr and Mrs E. D. Windham (Calle 16 de Septiembre #33, Ajijic) on 15 May 1971.

Phillips died at home on 5 February 1981. His wife later returned to Illinois, where she died at La Grange Park on 27 June 1987.

Acknowledgment

  • My sincere thanks to Shanna W. Sellers for sharing images of the painting used to illustrate this profile.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
The history of the artistic community in Ajijic is explored in several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village.

Sources

  • Chicago Tribune: 30 Mar 1930, 105; 9 Sep 1935; 13 Feb 1938, 32; 9 Aug 1942, 31; 13 Apr 1952, 250; 23 18 Feb 1981.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jul 032025
 

The Chapala Blade, a short-lived 1960s’ tabloid, is almost certainly the earliest local periodical to be published at Lake Chapala. It began only a month or two after the first issue of the Guadalajara-based Colony Reporter. Unfortunately, almost no evidence remains of the Chapala Blade.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 2 Jan 1962, p11.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 2 Jan 1962, p11.

No copies of Chapala Blade are known to have survived. We don’t know who wrote or published it, or how many issues ever circulated. The limited, skeletal, information we have about the Chapala Blade comes from an article by a veteran U.S. journalist in a 1964 Nebraska newspaper.

Photographer and writer Jack Bailey (1901-1977) was visiting Guadalajara. Most of his article is about the beautiful rented home in the city, where friends (Mr and Mrs Paul Pappinfoss of St. Cloud, Minnesota) lived, and where they watched a Sunday bull fight on the television. He also describes a nearby “new housing project being financed by the Rockefeller interests. It covers an area of about 10 square blocks in which modest priced homes in the $7,000 bracket are being built for Mexicans and Americans who are looking for an inexpensive way of life.”

According to Bailey, the typical two-bedroom home in this development included a small backyard and a maid’s quarters of two rooms with a private bathroom. He was especially struck by the view down the street, which looked like “an artist’s palette after it had been used for months,” with homes “painted every color imaginable from bright red to royal purple, with blues, greens and yellows mixed in between.”

Bailey was on a day trip to Lake Chapala when he encountered the Chapala Blade, an experience which left an indelible impression on him:

While having lunch at Lake Chapala, a member of the fourth estate, if he could be called that, gave the newspaper business a black eye. He moved from table to table selling the Chapala Blade, a four page tabloid which told about the social happenings at Ajijic and Chula Vista.
After a diner purchased a paper he tried to sell them a yearly subscription to the sheet, a paper most people would have little use for. He stopped at our table and when we turned him down for the yearly subscription he put on his begging act, something you would not expect from an able-bodied 35-year-old American.
“I’m not like the other Americans who have retired down here,” he said. “This is my only of making a living. I have to sell subscriptions to the paper or I cannot live.”
We were so disgusted we could hardly show him any courtesy. He had come closer to begging than the poorest of the Indians who might have a reason. It certainly did not add respect for newspapermen.”

This is the only known reference to the Chapala Blade. If any copies ever come to light, they would surely offer some interesting insights into the rapidly expanding 1960s’ English-speaking community at Lakeside.

The best source for what Ajijic was like at that time, in terms of everyday living and events, is “Lotus Land,” a 21-page, mimeographed booklet about Ajijic penned by Ralph Jocelyn McGinnis (1894-1966), a U.S. sports writer, publicist and painter who was then living in the village.

Note: The first issue of the Colony Reporter (now The Guadalajara Reporter) left the presses in December 1963. The first issue of El Ojo del Lago came two decades later in 1984, the same year that a short-lived Ajijic-based publication named Welcome (produced by Andrés Ivon) also first appeared. Some years later, at the very end of the 1980s, the late Jorge Romo Rebeil published the Chapala Riviera Guide (which ran from 1989 to 1992) and La Ribera, its sister Spanish-language periodical.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Source

  • Jack Bailey. 1964. “View Low-Cost Housing Project. Prudent Matadors Leery of El Toro.” The Grand Island Daily Independent, (Nebraska): 31 March 1964, 10.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Jun 292025
 

For Canadians, who celebrate 1 July as Canada Day, here is a list of Canadian artists and authors who have historical connections to Lake Chapala and who have been profiled on this site. Enjoy!

Visual artists

Henry Sandham (1842-1910), a well-known Canadian illustrator of the time, illustrated Charles Embree‘s historical novel, A Dream of a Throne, the Story of a Mexican Revolt (1900), the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala. Embree, who published several novels and numerous short stories, was a genuine Mexicophile if ever there was one, but died in his early thirties.

Way back in the 1940s, painter Hari Kidd (1899-1964), who had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, lived in Chapala. This is when he first met and fell in love with fellow artist Edythe Wallach, his future wife, who was then living in Ajijic.

Love was in the air at Lake Chapala in the 1940s. In Ajijic in 1949, Canadian writer Harold Masson (1915-2011) met and married English nurse Helen Rigall, who was in Ajijic visiting her uncle, Herbert Johnson, and his wife, Georgette.

American artist Gerry Pierce (1900-1969), who painted several watercolors in Ajijic in the mid-1940s, began his art career in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late 1920s.

Canadian artist Clarence Ainslie Loomis painted Ajijic in the early 1990s. I would love to learn more about this elusive character whose paintings are very distinctive.

Loomis was following in the footsteps, so to speak, of Canadian artist Eunice Hunt and her husband Paul Huf who spent many years working in Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple married in Ajijic and their two sons were both born in Mexico. The family subsequently moved to Paul’s native Germany to continue their artistic careers.

In the 1950s, a young Canadian woman, Dorothy Whelan, became the partner of artist and photographer Ernest Alexander (1921-1974) who ran the  Scorpion Club in Ajijic. “Alex” led an extraordinary life but, sadly, things spiraled out of control after the couple left Ajijic and moved to San Francisco.

Swedish-American visual artist Carlo Wahlbeck (born in 1933) studied at the Winnipeg School of Art in Canada and lived in Chapala for two or three years in the mid-1970s.

Multi-talented Mexican guitarist and artist Gustavo Sendis (1941-1989) lived many years in Ajijic and had an exhibition on Vancouver Island at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C., in July 1980. If anyone knows any details of this exhibit, then please get in touch!

Toronto muralist and painter John Russell Richmond (1926-2013) lived and painted in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. In Ajijic, he became known (and signed his work) as Juan Compo.

Margaret Van Gurp (1926-2020), a well known artist from eastern Canada, sketched and painted in Jocotepec in 1983, while living with her daughter Susan, then working at the Lakeside School for the Deaf. One of the founders of that school was Jackie Hartley, a retired Canadian teacher who had taught in Canada, and who took some excellent photographs of Jocotepec in the 1980s.

Hungarian-Canadian artist Michael Fischer (?-2018), based outside Toronto, taught illustration and composition at George Brown College, and painted at Lake Chapala several times, staying in San Juan Cosalá.

The body of work completed by Duncan de Kergommeaux during his visit of several weeks to San Juan Cosalá in 2006 was included in his solo show in Ottawa the following year.

Highly regarded painter, collage artist and violinist Leonard Brooks (1911-2011) and his wife, Reva, an award-winning photographer, made their home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years. Brookes’ interesting collage acrylic on canvas titled “Chapala” was sold at auction in 2020.

Canadian teacher, photographer and social activist Jean (‘Jackie’) Hartley lived in Jocotepec for several years at the start of the 1980s. She and a friend, Roma Jones, co-founded the Lakeside School for the Deaf, now the School for Special Children, located in that lakeside town.

Poets, authors, writers and playwrights

Several Canadian poets have been inspired by Lake Chapala. For example, Earle Birney visited Ajijic in the 1950s and Canadian performance poet Canadian performance poet Leanne Averbach visited the lake many years later. The great Al Purdy first visited Chapala on a quest to explore the haunts of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and later produced a limited edition book based on his trip. [Lawrence wrote his novel “The Plumed Serpent” while staying in Chapala in 1923.] Purdy also wrote a travel piece about Ajijic.

Prominent Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989) was teaching at the American School of Guadalajara when she visited and photographed Lake Chapala at about the same time (1923) as D. H. Lawrence was there.

Canadian historian and non-fiction writer Ross Parmenter (1912-1999) only ever spent a few days at Lake Chapala, in 1946, but has left us detailed descriptions of the local villages and of what life was like at the time. His accounts of the difficulties of traveling from Chapala to Ajijic,  first by car, and then by boat, in the 1940s are interesting reading.

The enigmatic Maxwell Desmond Poyntz, who was born in British Columbia on 4 January 1918 and died in Canada, at the age of 81, on 29 November 1999, is known to have visited Jocotepec while working on a “proposed trilogy”. It is unclear if he ever finished this magnum opus; there is no record of its publication.

Canadian journalist and adventurer Evan Evans-Atkinson (who used the name Evan Atkinson for his early writing) wrote “Candid View of Chapala. An Honest Report on Retiring In Mexico” for the New York-based periodical Travel in 1958.

Former CBC war correspondent and author Captain William (“Bill”) Strange (1902-1983) and his wife Jean Strange, one of Canada’s earliest female architects, lived in Chapala for decades and, in the 1960s, produced several radio documentaries about Mexico.

US-born author and diplomat José de Olivares, who wrote an account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala in 1901, held a US consular position in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1915-1924.

The famous Canadian playwright and novelist George Ryga (1932-1987) had a holiday home in San Antonio Tlayacapan for many years in the 1970s and 1980s and frequently visited and wrote while staying there. His play “Portrait of Angelica” is set in Ajijic. Several literary friends and relatives of Ryga also visited or used his holiday home. They include Ryga’s daughter Tanya (a drama teacher) and her husband Larry Reece, a musician, artist and drama professor; Brian Paisley, and the multi-talented Ken Smedley and his wife, the actress, artist and model, Dorian Smedley-Kohl. Ken and Dorian Smedley were instrumental in mounting the first (and only) Ajijic Fringe Theatre – “El Fringe” – in 1988.

Canada was a safe haven for Scottish Beat novelist Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), who worked on his controversial novel Cain’s Book (1960) in Ajijic in the late 1950s. The group of friends that helped smuggle Trocchi into Canada to escape prosecution in the U.S. included American novelist Norman Mailer (who first visited Ajijic in the late-1940s).

American Buddhist author Pema Chödrön, known at the time as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, lived with her then husband, the poet and writer Jim Levy, for about a year in Ajijic from mid-1968 until May 1969. Chödrön moved to Canada in 1984 to establish Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada. She became the Abbey’s director in 1986 and still holds that position today.

Canadian visitors to Lake Chapala in the 1970s included artist-author Harry Furniss (1920-2015) and his wife, Enid. His three-volume off-beat memoir, interspersed with line drawings, includes a chapter about visiting long-time friends Leslie and Eleanor Powell in Chapala, who first settled there in 1973. Furniss met various other Canadians living at Lake Chapala, including French-Canadian lawyer Pacifique “Pax” Plante (1907-1976), “the “Elliot Ness” of Montreal, and journalist-screenwriter couple John and Lenore Clare.

Additional profiles of Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala are added periodically. This post was last updated on 1 July 2025.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Comments and corrections welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Jun 262025
 

It is not surprising that the iconic and historic Chapala Railroad Station, designed by Guillermo de Alba, and completed in 1920, has appealed to so many photographers and artists over the years, and his grandson Martin Casillas de Alba is the author of several books related to Lake Chapala and his family’s links to local history.

The railroad, built with largely Norwegian capital, was the major project of the Compañía de Fomento de Chapala, S.A. (Chapala Development Company), an enterprise masterminded by Norwegian visionary Christian Schjetnan.

Photo: 'Romero', c. 1925. Postcard published by S. Altamirano.

Photo: ‘Romero.’ c. 1925. Postcard published by S. Altamirano.

Prior to engaging de Alba, Schjetnan had asked Norwegian-American architect Arne Dehli to prepare a drawing showcasing how the station could be the focal point for a massive hotel-residential-marina project. Those plans sadly came to nothing. The railroad operated for only six years, from 1920 to 1926, before closing owing to a lack of profitability and exceptionally heavy rains which raised the lake level and flooded the tracks. (The lake’s highest recorded level during the twentieth century was on 27 August 1926.)

Users of the station in its heyday included, in 1923, English novelist D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda; U.S. poet Witter Bynner and his traveling companion Willard ‘Spud’ Johnson; and visual artists Lowell Houser and his friend Everett Gee Jackson. Jackson later recounted how he and Lowell had taken the train to Chapala on the spur of the moment, and loved what they saw:

“We walked from the railroad depot, which was on the edge of the great silvery lake, down into the village with its red-tile-roofed houses. All the little houses that lined the streets were painted in pale pastel colors, and most of the men we met in the streets were dressed in white and had red sashes around their waists and wide-brimmed hats on their heads. The women all wore shawls, or rebozos, over their heads and shoulders. Soon we came to the central plaza, which had a little blue bandstand in the middle.” (Burros and Paintbrushes, 5)

In the mid-twentieth century, the Chapala station building fell into disuse. It had become a multi-family squat, by the time its then owners—the González Gallo family—gave it to the state in 1992. Restoration began in 1998, and the building formally reopened as the González Gallo Cultural Center in 2006. The building and its extensive grounds now house a small museum of local archaeological and historical pieces, with spaces for exhibitions, presentations, concerts and other events.

Among the various early published photographic postcards of the Railroad Station are several images captured by Chapala-born José Edmundo Sánchez, and by two Guadalajara-based photographers: Juan Aráuz Lomeli and ‘Romero.’ One of Romero’s photographs of the station was colorized and published by the enigmatic ‘S. Altamirano.’

Post-1940 images published as postcards include those by Demetrio Padilla López (Foto Esmeralda) and by Jesús González Miranda, two prolific photographers of Chapala.

Here are four paintings or sketches of the station by visual artists completed in the second half of the twentieth century.

David Morris painted the station in the early 1950s, when he was a student at the University of Guadalajara. Morris’s main love was not painting, but pottery, and he gained a reputation as one of the finest California potters of all time.

David Morris. c 1951. Old Railroad Station, Chapala.

David Morris. c 1951. Old Railroad Station, Chapala.

Renowned watercolorist Gerald Collins Gleeson studied for a year in Mexico at the Mexico City College.

Gerald Collins Gleeson: Chapala Railway Station (1981)

Gerald Collins Gleeson. 1981. Old Railway Station Lake Chapala. Note: Giclées of Gleeson’s painting are available via the website of the California Watercolor Gallery.

Canadian Mark Eager, who grew up in Ajijic, remains modest about his art achievements. The late Jorge Romo Rebeil, publisher of several tourism newspapers, suggested that Mark would be the perfect choice to illustrate Western Mexico: a traveler’s treasury, and he was absolutely right. Mark’s wonderful pen and ink drawings enlivened the text, ensuring the book’s enduring appeal to readers. (Thank you, Mark!)

Mark Eager. 1993. Chapala's former railway station. (Illustration in Western Mexico: a traveler's treasury)

Mark Eager. 1993. Chapala’s former railway station. (Illustration in Western Mexico: a traveler’s treasury)

Retired U.S. Marine and world explorer Charles L Engebretson painted and ran an art gallery in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. Here is his interpretation of the Railroad Station:

Charles L Engebretson. c 1998. Railway Station, Chapala. (Collection of the late Richard Tingen)

Charles L Engebretson. c 1998. Railway Station, Chapala. (Collection of the late Richard Tingen)

The interior of the González Gallo Cultural Center is well worth visiting. It still boasts many of its original features, floors and details, and has acquired a permanent collection of works by two important artists: Austrian painter Georg Rauch and Mexican sculptor Miguel Miramontes Carmona, long-time residents of Jocotepec and Chapala respectively.

The story of Christian Schetjnan and the iconic Chapala Railroad Station is told in chapter 42 of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes.)

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Acknowledgments

  • The painting by Gerald Collins Gleeson is reproduced by kind permission of the California Watercolor Gallery.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jun 192025
 

Lest it be thought that wishful thinking about Lake Chapala is a recent trend, here is an early published piece about the lake that I think is a prime example of wishful thinking. Taking into account the illustration, it established a high bar for the many later instances of wishful thinking.

Felix Leopold Oswald (1845-1906) was born in Namus, Belgium, and became a physician before turning his attention to natural history. He traveled extensively, all over the globe, and was a prolific writer. He first visited Mexico with the Belgian Expeditionary Corps in 1866. From the 1870s to the 1890s, Oswald was a correspondent for various French and English periodicals. His first full-length work seems to have been Summerland Sketches (1880), based on a series of articles he had written for Lippincott’s Magazine.

Summerland Sketches purports to tell the story of explorations over a period of eight years. In the introduction, the author writes that:

This collection of Summerland Sketches is … a guide-book to one of the few remaining regions of earth that may give us an idea of the tree-land eastward in Eden which the Creator intended for the abode of mankind. In the terrace-lands of Western Colima and Oaxaca, near the head-waters of the Río Lerma and the mountain lakes of Jalisco, and in the lonely highlands of Vera Paz, we may yet see forests that have never been desecrated by an axe, and free fellow-creatures which have not yet learned to flee from man as from a fiend.”

Garold Cole, in his descriptive bibliography of American travelers to Mexico, wrote that “because Oswald was a doctor and naturalist, his observations on the healthfulness of the region and on the flora and fauna should be authoritative.” Unfortunately, Oswald’s descriptions—especially those in the chapter entitled “The Lake-Region of Jalisco”—appear to be a pastiche of half-remembered, or invented experiences. Despite the fanciful nature of Oswald’s accounts, it should be remembered that they were well received at the time they were written by an American public willing to devour almost anything, real or imaginary, about its southern neighbor.

Men in general are unacquainted with the fairest regions of their world. I am almost sure that there are towns of ten thousand inhabitants in the United States, and much larger cities in Western Europe, where it would be impossible to find one man who ever in his life heard even the name of Lake Chapala, while every other village schoolmaster in Europe and North America could write a treatise on Lake Leman or Loch Lomond…. Yet this fair lacus incognitus is ten times as large as all the lakes of Northern Italy taken together, and forty times larger than the entire canton of Geneva,—contains different islands whose surface area exceeds that of the Isle of Wight, and one island with two secondary lakes as big as Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine!”

Fact check:
(1) Lake Chapala is 1100 sq km in area, compared with about 11,300 sq km for ‘forty times… canton of Geneva.’
(2) The area of the Isle of Wight (381 sq km) is about 35% of the area of Lake Chapala, and hundreds of times the total area of all the islands in the lake.
(3) The largest island in the lake is Mezcala Island (0.2 sq km in area). Loch Lomond (71 sq km) is about 350 times larger and Loch Katrine (12.4 sq km) about 61 times larger than Mezcala Island.

Oswald illustration

This illustration (page 84 of Summerland Sketches) would do justice to many an Alpine lake, but bears no resemblance whatsoever to Lake Chapala then or now.

The shores of Lake Chapala had not borrowed their enchantment from the distance of the view. Sturdy hemlocks and bignonia trees crowd the impertinent underbrush out of the way, forming natural avenues along the beach, which slopes so gradually that the water line is almost everywhere accessible. The water is steel blue and wonderfully transparent, in spite of the algae and pond weeds that weave their tangled tendrils wherever the bottom is a little less obdurate. From the racks of an open wagon we could see the mountain forests of the opposite shore glittering with a moist and tremulous light and a thousand hues,—all possible shades, variations, and combinations of green and blue, darkened here and there by the gloom of a mountain gorge or the floating shadow of a cloud. But on the eastern shore the sierra presents a mural front to the lake, and discharges its drainage in the form of dripping springs and cascades, tiny rivulets mostly, except at the northeastern extremity of a triangular bay, where the falls of the Rio Blanco come down with a thunder that can be heard and felt for leagues around. A mile below the falls a few jagged rocks rise from the water, forming the southern outposts of the motley archipelago of cliffs and islands that extends along the eastern shore for at least sixty English miles. A meadow of pond reeds near one of the mid lake islands seemed to be a rendezvous for all possible kinds of waterfowl. Moor hens, surf ducks, flamingos, a long legged bird that looked like a stork, but might be a species of white heron, coots, and black divers, arrived and departed from and in all directions; and a little apart from the rest a flock of gansas, or swamp geese, disported themselves in the open water.”

Fact check:
Poetic as this description may be, it does not match the physiography or drainage characteristics of Lake Chapala. For example, ‘on the eastern shore the sierra presents a mural front to the lake, and discharges its drainage in the form of dripping springs and cascades’? The reality is that the eastern shore of Lake Chapala is (and was in the nineteenth century) a lowland area of floodplain and marsh with no significant hills or mountains.

Oswald’s other works included Physical education; or, The health-laws of nature (1882); Zoological sketches: a contribution to the out-door study of natural history (1883); The secret of the East, or, The origin of the Christian religion, and the significance of its rise and decline (1893); and Adventures in Cuba: How an American boy saved his friend and escaped from a Spanish prison (1898).

This is a lightly edited version of chapter 31 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales.

Source

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Jun 122025
 

Several artists associated with Lake Chapala attended the 1939-1940 San Francisco World’s Fair, also known as the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.

Screenshot from "Art in Acton" (silent movie by Orville Goldner)

Screenshot from San Francisco World’s Fair “Art in Acton” (Orville Goldner movie)

The star Mexican attraction at the Fair was Diego Rivera. As his contribution to “Art in Action,” Rivera designed and executed a mural titled Pan American Unity. This magnificent mural is now housed at the City College of San Francisco. Rivera’s only documented direct link to Lake Chapala is his visit (from Guadalajara) for a day in 1938, accompanied by French surrealist Andre Breton. But Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, may have visited the lake on other occasions. In her personal library, Frida kept a copy of Village in the Sun, the Ajijic-based book by ‘Dane Chandos,’ perhaps a gift from either author Peter Lilley or Ann Medalie.

In addition to Rivera, other artists linking Lake Chapala and the San Francisco World’s Fair include, in alphabetical order:

Painter and actress Irene Bohus (1913-1985) was sharing a house with muralist Diego Rivera on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco in 1940. Rivera planned to include a portrait of Bohus, who was assisting him, in the “Art in Action” mural, but she left him before he had finished, so Rivera painted another of his assistants, Emmy Lou Packard, instead. A decade later, Bohus exhibited a drawing of Lake Chapala in her 1953 solo show in Mexico City.

Architectural photographer Esther Born, best known for photographing modernist homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and other famous architects, documented the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940) in photos. A decade earlier, Born had traveled to Mexico to photograph architect-designed modernist homes in Mexico, including Villa Ferrara in Chapala.

Cinematographer Orville Goldner (of King Kong fame) made a series of four short, silent, color movies at the Golden Gate International Exposition. These films include footage of Diego Rivera painting the Pan American Unity mural, and of other artists demonstrating their varied techniques. They also feature the Mexican pavilion at the Fair. The movies, now in the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, can be viewed online. Thirty years later, Goldner and his wife lived for a time in Ajijic.

San Francisco World's Fair 1939

John Langley Howard (1902-1999), whose father was the architect behind the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, and many other major projects in California, was one of a group of artists commissioned in 1934 to paint murals in the Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill overlooking San Francisco. Howard later exhibited at Treasure Island. In 1951, Howard and his second wife, sculptor Blanche Phillips Howard, traveled to Mexico, where their year-long stay included time in Ajijic.

Painter and muralist Louis Ernest Lenshaw (1892-1988) had studied art in San Francisco and undertook commissions for the Works Progress Administration in the city in the 1930s, including one in the County Hospital Children’s Ward. At the Golden Gate International Exposition, Lenshaw, who knew Ann Medalie, worked on murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-1940. He visited Chapala in the late 1940s or early 1950s while spending several months living and working in Guadalajara.

Noted California abstract artist Robert Pearson McChesney (1913-2008), together with a score of other artists, helped paint several large murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-1940. McChesney and his second wife, sculptor Mary Fuller (1922-2022), lived in Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico for a year in the early 1950s. Though best known as a sculptor, Mary Fuller McChesney also wrote short stories, poems, art history articles and several detective novels using the pen name “Joe Rayter,” including Stab in the Dark, set in the 1950s’ Guadalajara art scene.

Some biographies of Israeli painter and muralist Ann Sonia Medalie (1896-1991) claim she worked as Diego Rivera’s assistant at the World’s Fair in San Francisco “in 1939.” But Rivera was not in San Francisco until the following year. Medalie had lived in San Francisco for several years, and assisted sculptor Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) and Hilaire Hiler (1898-1966) on murals in the  city’s Maritime Museum, and Miguel Covarrubias on the “Pageant of the Pacific” map murals now displayed in the de Young Museum. Medalie is not included on the list of Rivera’s assistants compiled by art historians at the City College of San Francisco, but likely met Rivera at that time. She became good friends with both Diego and Frida. Medalie painted in Ajijic for six months in 1944, when she exhibited at a group show at the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala, with Sylvia Fein, Jaime López Bermudez, Otto Butterlin, Ernesto Butterlin (“Linares”), and Betty Binkley. Several of Medalie’s Lake Chapala paintings were published in Modern Mexico and shown in Mexico City.

Novelist John J. Mersereau (1898-) grew up in California and studied at the University of California. His mystery novel Murder Loves Company (1940) is set at the 1939-1940 San Francisco World’s Fair, and is an interesting portrait of life in California at the end of the 1930s. Mersereau and his wife ‘retired’ to Ajijic in about 1960 and lived there for more than a decade.

Max Pollak (1886-1970) is best known for his portrait etchings. His etchings of Lake Chapala are believed to date from the mid-1930s, and include “Mexico: Papayas on Lake Chapala” and “Mexico: Weeping Willow on Lake Chapala.” Pollak settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1937, and exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939.

Print maker Charles Frederick Surendorf (1906-1979) exhibited at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. His intricate linoleum block prints have been favorably compared in quality to the much-acclaimed work of Thomas Hart Benton, and in 1959 Art Digest called him one of the top twenty-five woodblock artists in the world. Surendorf first visited Lake Chapala in 1963, and revisited the area with his family five years later, when he made the preliminary block print sketches in Ajijic for carving a series of printing blocks back in California.

San Francisco World's Fair 1939

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jun 052025
 

The talented nineteenth century poet and dramatist Pablo J. Villaseñor is best remembered today for his creative work. But, shortly before he died in 1855, he also wrote an entry about Lake Chapala for a remarkable, collaborative, national, multi-volume publication titled Diccionario universal de historia y de geografía.

Diccionario, Tomo 2
Here, in translation, are a few select excerpts from his 2200-word entry on Lake Chapala to give a sense of Villaseñor’s writing:

* CHAPALA: 13 leagues southeast of Guadalajara lies this delightful lake, surrounded by towns and estates of prodigious fertility. It is truly surprising that it has not been given the importance it deserves and that it is still so little known even by the people of Jalisco. . . . “It can be said that this lake is one of the most beautiful in the Americas, and in Europe there are seas less worthy of the name than the Mar Chapálico.”

After a concise description of the lake’s size, seasonal changes in depth, and main settlements on or close to its shores, Villaseñor laments that:

The unfortunate state of neglect of all our assets, and the lack of public spirit to undertake profitable projects, means that today only small fishing canoes and the occasional private boat or falúa [open decked boat] can be seen on Chapala, together with two that belong to the state government. [Ed. Note: The first steamboat was launched on Lake Chapala a decade later, in 1868.]

The indigenous people who live on the shores are generally farmers; but they also dedicate themselves ardently to fishing, and it is noteworthy that when the lagoon is perhaps at its most turbulent, on stormy nights, two or three fishermen will launch a miserable canoe, which is taking on water everywhere, to catch a few fish, the value of which does not exceed 8 or 10 pesos, if they are lucky. But the men who were born on the shore of the lake, who open their eyes to contemplate it every day, and who fall asleep on its beaches to the confused sound of its turbulent waves, have completely lost their fear. And we know someone who, when the storm raises the waves higher and the Mar Chapálico becomes more furious, throws himself into the water on a small raft, clutching a bottle of mescal, and in the depths of the lake falls asleep under the influence of the spirit, until the waves throw him back onto the shore. One of the magnificent spectacles that the lake presents is when a water bomb, commonly called a culebra [snake], falls on it: the storm thunders horribly over the waves; then the entire cloud detaches itself as a great column of water, and immediately another, gigantic and boiling, rises, with the entire lagoon as its base; the moment the cloud touches the waters of Chapala, it detaches itself, and the lake and the sky become tranquil and beautiful, like two mirrors placed one in front of the other.

One of the things that makes Chapala unique is its sweet, drinkable waters. They irrigate a multitude of orchards along the shore, where the finest fruits and vegetables are produced. They also serve as an immense watering place for the many livestock on the surrounding farms. The water is clear, and no alligators or other offensive animals are ever seen in such a vast lagoon. On the contrary, the delicate white, delicious catfish, and an infinite variety of other fish inhabit its waves. This makes the entire shore a delightful place to swim, especially Chapala, where you can walk on crystalline white sand.

Among the fertile towns along its shore, one of the most beautiful is the one that gives it its name. Chapala is a small but delightful town, at the foot of the beautiful San Francisco Hill, which has the shape of a cone. It is famous for its hot springs, where many sick people recover their health, and for its fertility and temperature, under which the most varied and delicious fruits are grown. Still present on its shore, lapped by the lake’s waves, are the ruins of the old Franciscan convent, which today is a sad patch of rubble with a destroyed church that serves as a parish.”

Villaseñor includes only a brief reference to Jocotepec:

Another town worth mentioning is Jocotepec, for the gigantic image of the Lord of Huaje venerated there. Contemplating its enormous stature, which exceeds four varas [3 meters], one immediately realizes that the unfortunate Indians still mix the ridiculous exaggerations of idolatry with Christian worship. For them, the Lord of Huaje is a greater god, and to demean him would be sacrilegious temerity.”

But he then offers a detailed account of the town of Mescala [Mexcala], and the role its residents played as “brave defenders of the island that bears that name” during the War of Independence.

Villaseñor agrees with several earlier prominent individuals (Samuel L. Trant, Mariano Otero and Manuel de J. Olazagarre) that it is worth studying if navigation could be improved on the River Lerma, Lake Chapala and the River Santiago, in order to better link Mexico City and Querétaro with the states of Jalisco and Michoacán.

He concludes by hoping that his remarks might inspire his readers:

Would that these ill-formed lines could ignite a spark of that enthusiasm that has raised the cultured nations of Europe to such heights!

Following immediately after Villaseñor’s account of Lake Chapala in the Diccionario is a much shorter piece, with overlapping content, written by Manuel Orozco y Berra.

And, Volume 9 of the Diccionario, an appendix published a few years later, includes a third description of Lake Chapala. It was a Spanish language translation of the earliest scientific account of the lake, written by Paris-born naturalist Henri G. Galeotti. First published in French in 1839, a Spanish translation appeared shortly afterwards in El Mosaico Mexicano, a journal edited by Victoriano Roa.

It is highly probable that the republication of Galeotti’s work in the Diccionario was the source of the excerpts used by Antonio de Alba in his important book Chapala (1954), the earliest serious attempt to document Chapala’s local history.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales includes, with context and commentary, more than 50 original excerpts about Chapala from 1530 to 1910.

Sources

  • Pablo J. Villaseñor. ca. 1853. “Lago de Chapala,” in Lucas Alamán, José María Andrade, et al (comp). 1853-1856. Diccionario universal de historia y de geografía. 10 vol. Mexico: Tipografia de Rafael / Librería de Andrade. The Villaseñor entry for Chapala is Vol 2, p 666-668.
  • H. G. Galeotti. 1839. “Coup d’oeil sur la Laguna de Chapala au Mexique, avec notes géognostiques. géognostiques.” Acad. Roy. Soc. Bruxelles, Bull., 6, pt 1: 14-19.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

May 292025
 

Irene Bohus (sometimes Irene de Bohus), was born in New York in 1913, and died at the age of 72 on 27 March 1985 in a Mexico City hospital. Her parents, both born in Hungary, were Paul Bohus (1886-1966) and Irene Jelfy, who lived in Mexico City at the time of his death.

Irene Bohus’ link to Lake Chapala is via a work included in her solo exhibition at the Galeria Arte Contemporáneo (Amberes 12, Mexico City) in December 1953. At the exhibition, Bohus showed 26 oil paintings, including a self portrait and a portrait of Diego Rivera, and 8 brush drawings, one of which was titled Chapala.

While it remains unclear precisely when she was in Chapala, or whether she ever painted any other works based on her time there, Bohus is an important figure in Mexican art, not only on account of her own career, but also because of her close, even intimate, relations with both Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Irene Buhos sketching image of Helen Crlenkovich for San Francisco mural. 1940.

Irene Bohus sketching image of diver Helen Crlenkovich for San Francisco mural. 1940. (WPA photo).

Irene Bohus apparently studied art with private tutors in Berlin, Paris and Budapest. Examples of her paintings are in the permanent collections of some major museums.

Hayden Herrera, in his biography of Frida Kahlo, explains that Bohus was an assistant of Diego Rivera in Mexico City and shared his studio when Diego and Frida divorced. In May 1940, alerted by American actress Paulette Goddard (another of Rivera’s paramours at the time), Bohus helped Rivera avoid police when they came to question him about the first (unsuccessful) attempt on Trotsky’s life. Bohus drove him to safety as Rivera hid under a pile of canvasses in the car. Not long afterwards, Bohus and Rivera shared a house at 49 Calhoun Terrace on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, where Rivera was working on Pan American Unity, the mural he created in 1940 for the 1939-1940 San Francisco World’s Fair, also known as the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.

Rivera had planned to include a portrait of Bohus in this mural, but she left him, apparently at the insistence of her mother, before it was complete, and so Rivera painted Emmy Lou Packard, another of his assistants, instead. It was widely rumored at the time (1940) that Irene was pregnant with Rivera’s child.

By the time the mural was finished, Diego and Frida had remarried. But Bohus and Frida had become close friends, and testament to the strength of their friendship, Bohus’ name remained on Frida’s bedroom wall up to the time of Frida’s death in 1954. Frida also had a copy of Village in the Sun, the Ajijic-based book by ‘Dane Chandos,’ in her personal library.

Irene Buhos. 1940. Portrait of Modesta.

Irene Bohus. 1940. Portrait of Modesta.

Several of Bohus’ own paintings from her time in San Francisco are in U.S. museum collections. Portrait of Modesta (charcoal and colored chalks, 1939) is in the de Young Museum/Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and three works from 1940, including Mexican Boy, are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Bohus left San Francisco early in 1941 and eloped to Maryland with Orlando Weber Jr., ‘a society ornithologist’ and the son of a wealthy executive of a 500-million-dollar chemical corporation, whom she had first met a couple of years earlier. They married in Elkton, Maryland, in March 1941, and honeymooned in Mexico City. Later that year, Weber went birding in Chiapas and Bohus was given a major part in El barbero prodigioso, a comedic drama directed by Fernando Soler, released in 1942. Bohus’ first short-lived marriage ended in scandal and divorce. The acrimonious court proceedings included claims that Bohus had affairs with Diego Rivera; Guatemalan diplomat Luis Aguilar de León; a married Mexican Army officer, Lt. Cenfuejo; and German-born movie actor and director Fernando Wagner. For her part, Bohus wanted an annulment and brought a $250,000 lawsuit against her parents-in-law for ‘fraud and conspiracy.’

Bohus’ second marriage, to Mario José Sebastian, was more successful. She continued to paint, and occasionally exhibit, and undertook family portraits for several prominent Mexico City families until well into the 1970s. And her influence lives on. Among other lasting achievements, Bohus was an inspiration to Marta Wiley, a talented and ambitious young art prodigy in Mexico City, who has built an extraordinarily varied and successful career as a renaissance thinker, performer and artist.

  • Artists with links to both the 1939-40 San Francisco World’s Fair and Lake Chapala.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Hayden Herrera. 1983. Frida: A biography of Frida Kahlo. Harper and Row.
  • Justino Fernandez. 1954. “Catálogo de las Exposiciones de Arte en 1953.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Mexico.
  • Daily News (New York, New York), 15 May 1942, 228.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

May 222025
 

A bold and ambitious plan was proposed in the 1920s to build a modernist city on the shores of Lake Chapala. The idea, first mooted in 1921, was formalized in 1923 when a 64-page pamphlet was published as the first, and apparently only, issue of The Chapala Round Table. The proposed site was at the eastern end of the lake near La Barca.

Edited by Orlando Edgar Miller and Alexander Irvine, the pamphlet made the case for establishing the Chapala Co-operative University, “the greatest educational movement of the twentieth century,” in a purpose-built city, where people moved about in “swift moving automobiles or flying machines.”

The Founders League of the Chapala Co-Operative University included Orlando Miller as President and author Alexander Irvine as Chairman. Also on the advisory board were international attorney V. H. Pinckney, electrical engineer L. Earle Browne, mechanical engineer H. Haedler and architect Irving J. Gill, who rendered this illustration, the frontispiece of the published plan:

Irving Gill. 1923. The Chapala Co-Operative university. (see text for source)

Irving Gill. 1923. The Chapala Co-Operative University. (The Chapala Round Table, vol 1 #1.)

Irving J. Gill (1870-1936) was a renowned U.S. architect whose innovative designs laid the foundation for modernist architecture in Southern California, where a dozen of his buildings are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. There is no evidence that Gill (1870-1936) or, indeed, most of the other members of the project’s Advisory Board ever visited Lake Chapala. Orlando Miller, however, had first visited the lake in 1921 and had developed good contacts with Mexican government officials.

Oscar Miller. Chapala Round Table, Vol 1 #1 (1923)

Orlando Miller. Chapala Round Table, Vol 1 #1 (1923)

The city would have a great civic center, wonderful gardens and shady trees. Heat, light and power for the community would come from water; there would be no dust, dirt or smoke. Education would be free. Working age members of the co-operative would be expected to work four hours each day. The university, “in addition to the usual classical, literary and scientific courses, will teach architecture, landscape gardening, city building, civic righteousness and eugenics.” Each home would have almost an acre of land.

Trades and industries, such as dairying, cattle ranching, horticulture, a sanatorium and a hotel, would be set up, and the management of thousands of acres of fertile farmland around the city would help finance its needs. An eight-year financial plan showed how all the necessary expenditures could be met as the city grew to house 25,000 people on its 250,000-hectare site.

The Chapala Round Table pamphlet was illustrated with four small photographs of Lake Chapala: a sunset, perhaps taken at El Fuerte; a panoramic view looking west from Cerro San Miguel in Chapala; a view of Chapala church and the shoreline east of Chapala pier, and an image of Villa Tlalocan, built by British consul Lionel Carden in the 1890s. None of the images are credited in the pamphlet, though the photograph of Villa Tlalocan is definitely the work of Chapala-born photographer José Edmundo Sánchez.

Most of the material in the pamphlet was “reprinted with special permission from the pages of The Psychological Review of Reviews.” However, only a handful of issues of The Psychological Review of Reviews were ever published, and there is no evidence for a second issue of The Chapala Round Table. Like these two magazines, the proposed university-city was a short-lived idea. It was never built, but that’s another story, for another place. (See my article elsewhere: “On To Chapala” — The Chapala University Movement of the 1920s.”)

Miller was not the only person to dream of creating a super city at Lake Chapala. Other luminaries who contemplated establishing a Utopian or intellectual city at Lake Chapala in the twentieth century included Mexican artist Gerardo Murillo, better known as Dr. Atl, and the English novelist D. H. Lawrence, who first visited Chapala only a few months before the publication of The Chapala Round Table.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of this period and of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

May 152025
 

Nina Ketmer (1921-1965), a Danish-born naturalized American citizen and sculptor, lived in Ajijic in the early 1960s, following her marriage in about 1961 to Dick Bishop. Bishop had a spacious home at the corner of Ocampo and Privada Ocampo, which had belonged to his deceased wife, Margo, who, prior to marrying Bishop, had lived there with artist Otto Butterlin. In 1964, in Margo’s memory, Dick and Nina Bishop gave an X-Ray machine to the Chapala hospital and “a rare pair of pre-Columbian ceramic figurines” from Nayarit to a Central Florida museum.

Dick and Nina had a shared love of fine horses and also owned a property several blocks further west, at Ocampo 186, where they stabled their horses.

Ketmer-The_Commercial_Appeal-5-Mar-1950Nina was born on 19 September 1921 in Taastrup, Denmark, and became a U.S. citizen in 1958 while living in New York City at 248 E. 50th St., where she worked as a hair stylist for the Charles of the Ritz Salon. When she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1950, her new employer—Gould’s Kimbrough Beaty Salon in Kimbrough Towers—advertised that Ketmer had studied with the famous stylist, Rene-Rambau, in Paris” and arrived in the U.S. after “fifteen years of experience in the finest European Salons… in Stockholm and Copenhagen, Denmark and in Paris.” Given that she was still only about thirty years old when she moved to Memphis, this promotional blurb must be somewhat exaggerated. It is unknown how, where or when she acquired her sculpting skills.

Among Dick and Nina’s circle of close friends in Ajijic were Bill Atkinson; writer John Mersereau Sr. and his wife, Margaret; writer Gina Dessart Hildreth and her husband, Phillip; writer Bob Somerlott; real estate developer Lou Wertheimer and his wife, Cathy; and Helen Kirtland, the founder of Ajijic Hand Looms, and her husband, Larry Hartmus.

The Mersereaus were also horse-lovers. When they commissioned Marcos Guzmán to build them a house west of Ajijic at Rancho Nuevo, Nina presented them with an equestrian statue of Margaret Mersereau, who loved charro and rode her young Arab thoroughbred filly in all the village parades.

Tragically, Nina Ketmer Bishop died suddenly of liver failure on 5 January 1965; her remains were interred in the local cemetery.

A few days later, in a heartfelt tribute to Nina, Gina Hildreth called her “a beautiful and gracious hostess,” and explained how her friends “respected her as an artist of great talent… admired her wit and have marveled at her devoted interest in developing a stable of fine horses.”

If anyone has (or knows the location of) any example of Ketmer’s work, please get in touch!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic. Chapter 20 is about Helen Kirtland, and chapter 37 is about Dick Bishop’s long association with the village.

Sources

  • The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee): 5 March 1950, 74.
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 10 December 1964; 24 September 1964.
  • The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Florida): 22 November 1964, 26; 26 November 1964, 45.
  • John Mersereau Jr., personal communication by letter in 2008.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

May 082025
 

Did the great English author Aldous Huxley ever visit Lake Chapala? Let’s take a look at the evidence.

A single sentence of Ruta de la Ribera de Chapala, suggests that he did. The book is one in a series of guides to tourist routes in the state of Jalisco, published more than a decade ago by the State government. The single sentence (page 79) is, in translation:

Foreigners as diverse as the famous Werner von Braun—founder of NASA—or the renowned English writer Aldous Huxley, spent time in the region, attracted by the climate, which is said to be one of the best in the world.”

[Original: “Extranjeros tan dispares como el célebre Werner von Braun —fundador de la NASA— o el reconocido escritor inglés Aldous Huxley, pasaban temporadas en la región, llamados por el clima, que se dice es uno de los mejores del mundo.”]

This may have been the source relied on by Ajijic artist Jesús López Vega, when he claimed in an interview with Alessandro Salimbeni that Huxley had a connection to Ajijic.

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), writer and philosopher, author of dozens of books, certainly spent some time in Mexico, as evidenced by Beyond the Mexique Bay, his book of travel essays published in 1934. That book was based, according to his biographer Sybille Bedford on five months in the Caribbean, British Honduras (now Belize) and Southern Mexico in 1933.

The final essay in Beyond the Mexique Bay is about D. H. Lawrence (a friend and mentor of Huxley) and The Plumed Serpent, the novel Lawrence drafted at Lake Chapala in 1923. Perhaps it is this final chapter that has led casual readers to suppose that Huxley was also in Chapala?

Unfortunately for anyone claiming Huxley ever visited Chapala, his life and movements are well documented and he never came anywhere near the Lake Chapala region.

The sentence quoted above does get two things correct: Werner von Braum did live for a short time (in the mid-1970s) in Chula Vista, the residential subdivision between Chapala and Ajijic, and the area does indeed have one of the best climates in the world! On the other side of the ledger, alongside the (false) claim that Huxley ever lived in Ajijijc, von Braum was not a founder of NASA, even though he did direct its Marshall Space Flight Center and was the architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle which sent Apollo spacecraft into orbit and to the moon.

Huxley’s only link to Lake Chapala is vicariously, via the travels and writing of biographer Sybille Bedford. Bedford, born in Germany in 1911, grew up in southern France, in Sanary-sur-mer, a town visited by D.H. Lawrence, which in the 1930s attracted intellectuals fleeing from central Europe, including Aldous and Maria Huxley, who became Sybille’s mentors and inspiration. Bedford’s travels in Mexico in 1946-47, which included an extended stay at Lake Chapala, were the basis for her fictionalized travel book, The Sudden View, first published in 1953 and re-issued later as A Visit to Don Otavio.

Huxley’s visit to Lake Chapala is a myth. Yet, despite lacking evidence—and like so many other Lake Chapala-related myths—it continues to re-surface periodically from the depths of cyberspace.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Arabella González Huezo (ed). 2006. Ruta de la Ribera de Chapala. (Rutas Culturales Jalisco #4). Gobierno de Jalisco: Secretaría de Cultura.
  • Alessandro Salimbeni. 2008. “Ajijic Cultural Center.” Lake Chapala Review, vol. 10 #4 (15 May 2008).

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

May 012025
 

Charles (‘Chuck’) Leroy Engebretson painted and ran an art gallery in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. A Marine Corps veteran, who served a decade in Korea and China, Engebretson was a life long artist who, according to his own estimate, completed more than 8000 paintings and 4000 portraits. Yet, his works rarely appear on the open market.

Engebretson was born on 1 April 1928 in Alkabo, North Dakota, grew up in Missoula, Montana, and died in Ogden, Utah, on 21 September 2017.

Engebretson was fascinated by art from childhood. Only three months into a scholarship at the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts, he was asked to teach some of the classes. At seventeen years of age, he curtailed his formal studies to volunteer for the Marines, and was posted in southern China a few months after the end of World War II. Here, Engebretson sold his first painting – to his Commanding Officer!

Charles L Engebretson. c 1998. Railway Station, Chapala. (Collection of the late Richard Tingen)

Charles L Engebretson. c 1998. Railway Station, Chapala. (Collection of the late Richard Tingen)

Engebretson was less fortunate during a subsequent posting to Korea, when he was on the wrong end of an artillery barrage, which left him with a broken back and other major injuries. After a prolonged recovery and honorable discharge, he found that his mobility was better in water than on land, and became a commercial diver, traveling around the world, in tasks related to ocean oil rigs and underwater pipelines.

He also tried his hand at mining for gold in South America, and a number of other occupations, including living for a time in New Orleans and working as a street artist, painting the French quarter, and doing pastel portraits for tourists. According to one account, Engebretson was a co-artist for a 600-foot-long, 10-foot-high historical fresco of Louisiana for the walls of the Southern Pacific Train Depot, and another of his New Orleans murals was lost during a hurricane. Engebretson also painted a mural for the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Westminster, California.

Despite never completing a formal art education, Engebretson studied art wherever he traveled by taking classes from notable artists. His landscapes, seascapes, portraits and still lives employed a variety of techniques and mediums, including oils, watercolors and acrylics. Quoting the artist, his favored style was:

representational with an impressionistic flair. Over the years I have found that this works for me. I have used a variety of styles over time, but keep returning to this favorite means of expressing myself.”

In addition to gallery showings, his paintings and portraits were acquired for numerous private collections, including those of Princess Grace of Monaco, Lady Nancy Oakes, Sir William Bisson, sheik Isa Khalifa of Bahrein, and others. One of Engebretson’s most noteworthy accomplishments was a collection of 392 scenes of the Bahamas, which was purchased in its entirety by Magnavox Corporation.

Charles Engebretson. c. 1998. Seis esquinas, Ajijic.

Charles L. Engebretson. c. 1998. Seis esquinas, Ajijic. (Credit unknown)

In Ajijic, accompanied by his wife, Sharon, whom he had married in 1973, ‘Chuck’ became known as ‘Carlos.’ Engebretson painted and ran a gallery in the village until early in 2001, when they moved to Smithfield, Utah, where he painted a mural “Just One More Winter” for the Senior Citizens Center in 1997. A heart attack a few months later, slowed him down, but he continued to undertake some commission work in his final years, and taught art to seniors.

Engebretson was one of the 50 artists included in Cincuenta artistas, a book produced by CABA (Centro Ajijic de Bellas Artes) in 2000.

Chapter 42 of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes tells the story of the Chapala Railroad Station.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Nelson Funeral Home (Logan, Utah). “Charles (“Chuck”) Leroy Engebretson (obituary).”
  • Jeff Hunter. 2002. “An Artist’s Landscape.The Herald Journal (Logan, Utah).
  • Estela Hidalgo (coord). 2000. Cincuenta artistas: expresión plástica en la ribera de Chapala. CABA (Centro Ajijc de Bellas Artes.)
  • Richard Tingen, 27 Oct 2017 interview in Chapala.
  • Thetis Reeves. 2001. “Chuck’s Swan Song,” Lake Chapala Review, February 2001, p 47.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Apr 242025
 

When novelist John Mersereau retired in about 1960, he and his wife, Margaret, set off for Mexico, where they fell in love with the country and bought a house in Ajijic. The house, at Zaragoza #9, had formerly been owned by self-styled artist Dotty Strang. Strang had given free art classes to some local children, even though one of her local friends, contractor Marcos Guzmán, had advised that she charge something, however small, for the classes so that the children would value them.

John Mersereau - cover

The Mersereaus’ circle of friends in Ajijic included Dick and Nina Ketmer Bishop, Bill Atkinson; writer Gina Dessart Hildreth and her husband, Phillip; writer Bob Somerlott; real estate developer Lou Wertheimer and his wife, Cathy; and Helen Kirtland, the founder of Ajijic Hand Looms, and her husband, Larry Hartmus. The men, and Gina Hildreth formed an Ajijic chess club which held multi-week competitions.

Dick Bishop was one of Ajijic’s more colorful characters in the 1960s and 1970s, and forever associated with riding his large Arabian horse through the village. When the Mersereaus commissioned local contractor Marcos Guzmán to build them a house west of Ajijic at Rancho Nuevo, Nina Ketmer Bishop sculpted for them, as a gift, an equestrian statue of Margaret Mersereau, because Margaret also loved charro and rode her young Arab thoroughbred filly in all the village parades.

John Joshua Mersereau was born in Manistique, Michigan, on 23 January 1898. The family moved, while he was still a youngster, to Oakland, California, where John graduated from Oakland High School before studying, on and off, at the University of California. His college friends included Robert (‘Bobby’) Hyde, the author of Crude. Mersereau married Winona (‘Margaret’) Roberts and the couple had two sons: Charles, and John, Jr.

When the U.S. entered the second world war, Mersereau, then 43, enlisted in the Navy and was commissioned a lieutenant, serving as a speechwriter for the Twelfth Naval District. He completed his service after the war as a co-editor of a navy recruitment magazine.

Prior to retirement, the Mersereaus made their family home in Santa Barbara, California.

While none of Mersereau’s works were written, or set, in Mexico, his novel Murder Loves Company (1940) is a mystery story set at the 1939-1940 San Francisco World’s Fair. This Fair has numerous connections to Lake Chapala and his book is an interesting portrait of life in California at the end of the 1930s.

In addition to Murder Loves Company, Mersereau’s other published works include The Checkered Flag (1925), The Whispering Canyon (1926)—both of which were bought for movies—Gill O’ the Rangers (1930) and The Corpse Comes Ashore (1941). Mersereau also wrote a number of pulp magazine stories under the pseudonym Richard Race Wallace.

By coincidence, Mersereau’s story “Off the westbound freight” was published in 1934 in the same issue of Cowboy stories as a submission by ‘Bruce Douglas’— the pen name of Theodore Wayland Douglas (1897-1961)— who also later lived for a time in Ajijic.

After moving to Ajijic, the Mersereaus were visited by Kenneth Millar, a fellow mystery writer and friend from Santa Barbara. Millar (better known by his pen name Ross Macdonald) later used Ajijic as a setting for several chapters in his novel The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962).

In the mid-1960s, the Mersereaus contracted Marcos Guzmán to build them a house west of the village at Los Charales, where they lived until 1972. They spent the remainder of their lives in Forsythe, Missouri, where John died in February 1989 and Winona (‘Margaret’) in January 1994.

Acknowledgments

This profile could not have been written without the assistance of the late John Mersereau Jr., who shared memories of his father’s time in Ajijic with me in 2008. The article by Tom & Enid Schantz on the now defunct website of the Rue Morgue Press was also helpful.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic. Chapter 20 is about Helen Kirtland, and chapter 37 is about Dick Bishop’s long association with the village.

Sources

  • Tom & Enid Schantz. 2004. “John Mersereau.” Online (2004 to Jan 2025) at http://www.ruemorguepress.com/authors/mersereau.html
  • Santa Barbara News-Press: 11 Jan 1961, 11.
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 30 April 1964; 10 Dec 1964.
  • John Mersereau. 1934. “Off the westbound freight.” Cowboy stories (Vol. 26, no. 3).
  • John Mersereau. 1940. Murder Loves Company. Philadelphia & New York: J.B. Lippincott Company.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Apr 172025
 

Barbara F. Zagoria was one of the many talented artists working in Ajijic in the mid-1970s. Born in New York City on 17 February 1933, Zagoria studied at the School of Art and Design, New York City (1947-1950) and the Art Students League, New York City (1949) before taking a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, from which she graduated in 1953. In later life she took more classes at the Art Students League in New York City (1979-1980) and did some postgraduate studies at the Special Security Team Travel School in Tempe, Arizona (1985).

Barbara Zagoria. Mexican lady and child (detail).

Barbara Zagoria. Mexican lady and child (detail).

In January 1952 she married Sam Zagoria and began work as a fashion illustrator with the Kramer, Tobias & Meyer Agency in New York. Two years later, she left that firm to work as a fabric designer for Paragon Mills for a year.

In the 1960s, Zagoria was a commercial artist in Massapequa, New York (1965-1966) before working as a freelance illustrator and teacher in Seaford (1967-1970). She founded the Seaford Creative Arts Workshop on Long Island, New York, in 1963 and continued to work with them until 1969.

She spent most of the 1970s at various locations in Mexico, where she was best known as a portrait painter. During that time she held several solo shows, including

  • Bellas Artes-Casa de la Cultura
  • Hotel Acapulco Princess, Acapulco (1975-1979) and
  • Hotel La Cupula, Guatemala (1977)
Barbara Zagoria. 1991. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Barbara Zagoria. 1991. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. (North Country Blade Citizen)

Zagoria lived at Lake Chapala in the late 1970s, and held a solo show at Posada Ajijic in December 1977. This was apparently her first Lakeside show, though she was already well known in the area on account of the many paintings and posters she had done for the local theater.

In addition to exhibitions of fine art work, she also arranged public relations art exhibits for American Tourist Offices in Mexico and Guatemala.

After moving back to the U.S., Zagoria was a travel consultant for art tours organized by Ames/Plaza Travel (1986-2001) and participated in, and judged, art shows in Arizona and California. Her pastels were shown in a group exhibit in 1985 at Gallery of the Unknown in Phoenix, Arizona, and in joint shows in 1987 and 1989 at the La Jolla Art Assocation Gallery in La Jolla, California. She also held one-person shows at W. Plaza Gallery, Arizona (1985), Palomar College, California (1990), and at La Jolla, California (1991). Zagoria, a member of the California Art Association, gave demonstrations and judged numerous art shows in the state during the 1990s.

Zagoria lived “years in Mexico and New Guinea, and has visited South America, Central America, Russia and Greece among other places.” Her wide range of interests spans everything from archaeology, drama and jazz to parapsychology.

Her first husband, Sam, died in 1995. Zagoria later married David Blye, who works in stained glass. The couple live in Saddlebrooke, Tucson, Arizona, where Zagoria was, for many years, the gallery chairperson for the casual art gallery in the main clubhouse Javelina Room, used by the Saddlebrooke Fine Arts Guild.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village describe the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Guadalajara Reporter: 24 July 1976, 21; 3 Dec 1977, 19.
  • North County Blade-Citizen: 5 July 1991, 216.
  • Newsday (Nassau Edition): 8 Aug 1963, 80.
  • Arizona Republic (Phoenix): 13 Nov 1985, 232.
  • Wm. A. “Antonio” Rigney. 2010. “At David’s and Barbara’s.” Blog post, 22 August 2010.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Apr 102025
 

Despite Pablo J. Villaseñor’s tragically short life—he died in 1855 at the age of 27—he has left us some memorable literature, including an evocative romantic poem about Lake Chapala, an entry about Chapala in Mexico’s multi-volume, Diccionario Universal de Historia y Geografía, and a play with its own Wikipedia page.

Pablo José María Villaseñor Villaseñor was born 14 January 1828 in Guadalajara, and baptized there at Templo de Nuestra Señora del Pilar three days later. Villaseñor’s family owned the Hacienda de Cedros in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos, so he would have been very familiar with Lake Chapala from an early age. He began studies at the Seminario Conciliar de Guadalajara in 1837.

His literary career began in 1846 when he started writing for a newspaper called El Látigo. He later also wrote for Voz de Alianza, and was a founder member of the Sociedad Literaría La Falange de Estudio.

On 19 February 1849 at the age of 21, Villaseñor married Petra Ignacia Garcia Camberos (1833-1911) at the Santuario de Guadalupe in Sayula, Jalisco. (Their son, Juan Villaseñor, was born the following year; he married in Guadalajara in 1877.) A few months after marriage, Villaseñor accepted the (largely honorary) title of abogado.

Pablo J. Villaseñor Villaseñor. Source: Romo Selis, 1945.

Sources: Image from Romo Selis, 1945, poem as presented in Navarro, 1853.

Villaseñor had a very active literary career, writing in various genres, and participating in various literary groups and magazines. In 1851, he contributed 16 poems to a collection he helped organize titled Aurora poética de Jalisco: colección de poesías líricas de jóvenes jalisciences, dedicada al bello sexo de Guadalajara (Poetic Dawn of Jalisco: a collection of lyrical poems by young people from Jalisco, dedicated to the fair sex of Guadalajara), published in Guadalajara by J. Camarena.

His emotive poem titled A Chapala (To Chapala), written in 1851, portrays the lake as a living, breathing entity, with sentiments such as love, longing, pain and melancholy, a stage for both remembered and untold stories of heroes and former glories.

Here’s an informal English translation of a sample stanza from the middle of the poem:

Time flies. What remains
Of the gloomy monastery?
Rubble, oh! and mystery,
The grass that grows there!
And the tombs of the heroes,
Forgotten among the sand;
And the sacred walls,
Made nests for reptiles.

Pablo Villaseñor died at the family’s Hacienda de Cedros on 13 November 1855.

Shortly after the poet’s death, historian Agustín Rivera y Sanromán (1824-1916), a long-time friend of the Villaseñor family, spent two weeks at Hacienda de Cedros. In a footnote in his 1910 life of Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Rivera noted that the “Villaseñor family of Guadalajara” had owned Cedros (which dates back to the sixteenth century) since “long before 1810″ and then described the family dining table:

I had the pleasure of eating at the dining room table, which had recently been restored and was worthy of a museum. It is large, made of unpainted wood, and the owners have been curious enough to inscribe on it the names of people who have eaten there. There I read the names of Bishop Mayor, Bishop Cabañas, Father Hidalgo, Archbishop Espinosa, and others. One of the respectable people with whom I dined is Mrs. Ignacia Garcia, widow of my friend the poet and lawyer Don Pablo J. Villaseñor.”

According to Enrique Palomar, the name of Primitivo Ron was also carved into the Villaseñor family dining table, because he had taught the hacienda owner’s only son, Lorenzo, while employed as a teacher in the local village school in Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos. Primitivo Ron gained infamy some years later in 1889 when he assassinated General Ramón Corona, the Governor of Jalisco, whose name is apparently also carved in this historic table.

Guillermo Romo was a close friend of the Villaseñor family. In a 1945 article, he included a previously unpublished biographical recollection of the poet’s life written by Clemente Villaseñor in 1858, in which he explained that, because Pablo Villaseñor,

was very ill and suffered from aneurysms, the applause of the public and the opinion they formed about his compositions—favorable or adverse—greatly affected him and sometimes he fell bedridden. He was very satirical in his private conversations.”

Villaseñor’s entry about Chapala for Mexico’s nineteenth-century Diccionario Universal de Historia y Geografía will be considered in a separate post.

And the Wikipedia page? Villaseñor’s most famous three-act drama, a tragedy based on historical events in Guadalajara, is El Palacio de Medrano: Drama en Tres Actos y en Verso, published in 1851, which (for some reason) has its own English language Wikipedia page.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Juan R. Navarro (publisher). 1853. Guirnalda poetica: selecta colección de poesias mejicanas. Mexico: Imprenta de Juan R. Navarro.
  • Enrique Palomar. 1982. “Una Mesa con Historia.” El Informador: 4 July 1982, 11.
  • Agustín Rivera. 1910. Anales de la Vida del Padre de la Patria Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. León, Guanajuato: Imprenta de L. López.
  • Guillermo Romo Celis. 1945. “Una visita a Cedros, solar de los Villaseñor.” pp 61-87 of Indice de las Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de Genealogia y Heraldica, Tomo I, No. 1 (marzo de 1945), pp 61-86. Romo Celis cites a document written by Clemente Villaseñor, dated 6 October 1858.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Apr 032025
 

This is the fourth in a mini series looking at examples of photo identification and interpretation errors related to the Lake Chapala area. In his article in the February 2025 issue of Estudios Jalisciences, Dr. Juan Arturo Camacho Becerra included this photograph, taken at Lake Chapala by Guadalajara-based photographer José María Lupercio. It was not the photograph itself, but the author’s interpretation of the photograph, that caught my eye.

The image was first published in El Mundo Ilustrado in 1903, and was later reproduced, slightly cropped, as a postcard in a series published by M. Hernández. I included the postcard version as Figure 2.5 in Lake Chapala: a postcard history.

Fig. 1 of article

Fig. 1 of article by Juan Arturo Camacho Becerra in Estudios Jaliscienses #139.  Note that, despite the caption, this must be Lake Chapala, not a river.

The interpretation given by Dr. Camacho on page 29 of his article is as follows:

The image is very revealing as to the technology of towing, since as early as 1868 steamboats were operating, making trips across the lake and touching various points. The railroad arrived in Guadalajara in 1888, so in this image, a primitive technology for towing canoas is still shown. From the photographer’s point of view, it seems to be near the shore, and the cart’s momentum will allow it to be launched into navigation. The photograph also gives us a visual testimony of the main activity on the lake at that time: fishing.” [The original Spanish text is given at the end of this post]

In my opinion, the photograph fails to support this interpretation. The idea that canoas (‘sail canoes’) were launched by being towed by cart into the lake is not found in contemporaneous descriptions, and would be extremely inefficient. If canoas were launched by being towed, then why have a cart at all? It would be far more effective to simply have oxen (or other beasts of burden) pull the boat direct.

Fishing was a major activity on the lake. But this canoa is most definitely not a fishing vessel, and the photograph offers no evidence related to fishing. Fishing canoas were open, in order to make it easy to handle nets and catch. Covered canoas—such as the one in Lupercio’s superb photograph—were cargo vessels, used to transport goods and produce (and sometimes passengers) from one lakeside village to the next.

A closer look at the photograph strongly suggests that this particular canoa has brought a load of wood, which is being offloaded into the cart in the shallows of the lake. This activity actually ties in very closely with Dr. Camacho’s reference to steamboats on the lake. Wood fueled the boilers which powered the steamboats and their large paddles. On average, sternwheelers burned about two cords (256 cubic feet) of wood an hour while traversing the lake, so piles of wood were stacked at strategic points on beaches around the lake to ensure that fuel was always readily available along their routes. The cart in the photograph may well be transporting wood to one of these woodpiles. But there are some alternative possibilities, since  large quantities of firewood were also required at that time to fuel the lime kilns working in many villages, and for domestic use, primarily in kitchens. (I consider this in more detail in Lake Chapala: a postcard history.)

Detail from Hernández postcard of Lupercio's photograph.

Detail from the Hernández postcard of Lupercio’s photograph.

This is why, I captioned the version of this photograph in Lake Chapala: a postcard history, as follows:

“Transferring cargo from sail canoe to cart, c. 1906. J. M. Lupercio; M. Hernández. A team of oxen waits patiently for a heavy cargo (perhaps wood) to be unloaded from a large, covered sail canoe (canoa). A cart this size could carry about one cord of wood (128 cubic feet).”

It is apparent from his article, which  includes several other less serious factual errors and questionable interpretations relating to the history of Chapala, that Dr. Camacho is, unfortunately, unfamiliar with my own research and writing. I am happy to discuss this further, with him or anyone, via comments or email.

Photo by José María Lupercio (El Mundo Ilustrado, 15 November 1903)

Photo by José María Lupercio (El Mundo Ilustrado, 15 November 1903)

Original Spanish text:

“La imagen es muy reveladora en cuanto a la tecnología de arrastre, ya desde 1868 circulaban vaporetos que hacían travesías por el lago tocando diversos puntos. El ferrocarril llegó a Guadalajara en 1888, de manera que en esta imagen todavía se muestra una tecnología primitiva para el arrastre de canoas, desde el punto de vista del fotógrafo parece estar en las orillas y el impulso de la carreta permitirá botarla a la navegación. La fotografía también nos presenta un testimonio visual de la entonces principal actividad del lago: la pesca.” (Juan Arturo Camacho Becerra, 2025, página 29)

Source

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Mar 272025
 

Of all the books associated with Lake Chapala, perhaps the one with the most curious title is Mexico My Home. Primitive Art and Modern Poetry With 50 easy to learn Spanish words and phrases. For all children from 8 to 80. With only 32 pages, and with only a few words on every alternate page, the title is almost as long as the book!

Published in 1972, the book has fifteen short, child-friendly poems written by Ira Nottonson, with illustrations opposite each poem by artists Peter Huf and Eunice (Hunt) Huf. The illustrations are Mexican naif in style, though the Hufs’ art tended more towards abstraction or surrealism.

Nottonson-booklet-artwork

Sample page from Mexico My Home

 

Nottonson first met the Hufs, then living in Ajijic, at the Hotel Camino Real in Guadalajara one Sunday afternoon in 1971, when he spotted their selection of small, painted easels at a show in the hotel. Nottonson, who also lived in Ajijic, and was at the hotel by chance, introduced himself, and asked if they would illustrate several children’s books he was working on.

Nottonson poem and Huf image

Sample page from Mexico My Home

Even though their ensuing partnership only resulted in this one book, Nottonson and his wife, Sandra (‘Sandy’) Baker Burton, became good friends with the Hufs, and with another couple: painter Beth Avary and her husband, Don. Beth also wrote some poetry. As Peter Huf explained to me over supper at his home in Germany, Ira “fancied himself as a modern poet . . . in the style of Beth Avary.” He was somewhat successful. The Guadalajara Reporter told its readers that Mexico My Home was “an unusually beautiful and practical book” of modern poetry.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Ira Nathan Nottonson was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 14 February 1933, and died at the age of 85 in Boulder Colorado, on 27 March 2018. He graduated from Brookline High School in Massachusetts, and gained a degree in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before completing a law degree at Boston College Law School. In the 1960s, he apparently wrote scripts for several short dramas produced by the Playhouse Workshop. He was also a moderator for at least one episode (“The Game of Sex”) of the long-running series “Ideas on Trial.” He married Sandra Baker Burton in about 1968.

When they moved to Lake Chapala in late 1970 with their five children from previous marriages, the Guadalajara Reporter asserted that Nottonson had ‘retired’, despite being only in his thirties. The newspaper explained that Nottonson was living on income from a Night Club he owned in Cambridge, Massachusetts; from a TV production company he owned, and from his financial interest in an advertising agency. “Income from all these projects permits this young man to sit and write children’s books, three of which are in publisher’s hands for possible publication.”

After their relatively brief time in Mexico, Nottonson and his family returned to the U.S., where he was appointed general counsel to International Industries (1973-76), and then held various high-ranking positions with Postal Instant Press (1976-86). In the 1990s, Nottonson and his wife moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he taught law and business classes and wrote a regular business column for the Daily Camera.

In addition to poetry, Nottonson also wrote or co-wrote several business-related books, including The secrets to buying and selling a business (1994); Before You Go into Business, Read This (1999); Ultimate book to buying or selling a business (2004); Forming a partnership: and making it work (2007); and Small business legal tool kit (2007).

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Ira N. Nottonson. 1972. Mexico My Home. Primitive Art and Modern Poetry With 50 easy to learn Spanish words and phrases. For all children from 8 to 80. Guadalajara, Mexico: Boutique d’Artes Graficas.
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 12 Jun 1971; 20 Nov 1971.
  • Anon. Ira Nathan Nottonson (obituary). The Daily Camera, 15 April 2018.
  • Peter Huf, interviewed at his home in Germany in 2014.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Mar 192025
 

Mary Elizabeth “Beth” Avary was just beginning her career as a visual artist when she moved to Ajijic in late 1970 with her husband, Don, and their three young children. The family lived there for a year before returning to the US.

Born to Edward George Schaefer and his wife, Mildred, in Indianapolis on 14 April 1941, Beth Avary began to paint as a child. She took a summer program at the University of Kansas (1957), before beginning her formal art studies at Northwestern University (1959-1960). Then, after summer classes at the Chicago Art Institute (1960), Avary completed her studies at the California College of the Arts (1961-1965), graduating with a BFA with honors. She also took a summer program at the University of California Berkeley (1962).

Beth Avary. 1971. Untitled. Courtesy of Kimi Avary.

Beth Avary. 1971. Untitled. Courtesy of Kimi Avary.

Avary’s work was influenced not only by her appreciation and knowledge of different artistic styles, but also by travel, which included spells living in France, Thailand, Japan (her first solo exhibition was at the Miramastu Gallery in Tokyo in 1967) and Mexico.

She first met her future husband, Air Force pilot Donald Davis Avary, while working on a troop flight bound for Vietnam. The couple settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they raised their three children. Don retired from the Air Force in early 1969 and accepted a position with Western Airlines. The children were still toddlers when he was furloughed a year later, so the family decided to spend some time in Mexico. A relative living in Guadalajara suggested they try Ajijic. The village home they rented was at Donato Guerra #4.

Among the friends they made in Ajijic were painters Peter and Eunice Huf, and lawyer-poet Ira Nottonson and his wife, Sandra Burton. When Peter Huf and fellow artist John K. Peterson organized a Fiesta de Arte—originally called the “First Lakeside Artists Fair—in May 1971, Beth Avary helped (as did Donald Hogan who was murdered a few months later).

Beth Avary. 1971. Ajijic.

Beth Avary. 1971. Ajijic. Courtesy of Kimi Avary.

The event was held at Calle 16 de Septiembre #33, in Ajijic, the private residence of Mr and Mrs E. D. Windham, and this is the only recorded exhibition in which Beth Avary participated in Mexico.

The other participating artists were Daphne Aluta; Mario Aluta; Charles Blodgett; Antonio Cárdenas; Alan Davoll; Alice de Boton; Robert de Boton; Tom Faloon; John Frost; Fernando García; Dorothy Goldner; Burt Hawley; Michael Heinichen; Peter Huf; Eunice (Hunt) Huf; Lona Isoard; John Maybra Kilpatrick; Gail Michael (Michel); Bert Miller; Robert Neathery; John K. Peterson; Stuart Phillips; Hudson Rose; Mary Rose; Jesús Santana; Walt Shou; Frances Showalter; ‘Sloane’; Eleanor Smart; Robert Snodgrass; and Agustín Velarde.

Peter Huf became a long-time admirer of her work. When I first questioned him about the various artists living in Ajijic when he was there in the early 1970s, Beth Avary was one of the first names he mentioned: “Beth was a very lyrical artist and had a psychedelic touch in a fine, feminine way.”

Over the course of her career, Avary explored several different genres of art. Her time in Ajijic helped her develop her own style, a celebration of landscapes that she termed naturalistic expressionism.

While living in Ajijic, she also wrote and illustrated Pablito Grows Up, a children’s story set in the village. The family returned to the U.S. when Don Avary was recalled by Western Airlines.

Beth Avary. Book illustration.

Beth Avary. 1971. Cover of Pablito Grows Up.

In addition to the show at the Miramastu Gallery in Tokyo (1967), Avary’s other major solo shows included Gallery 707, Los Angeles (1974); Institute of Noetic Sciences, Novato, California (1987-1988); Who’s Who In Art, Monterey, California (1999); Atelier Gallery, Santa Cruz, California (2000); and Schacknow Museum, Plantation, Florida (2006).

Beth Avary. Book illustration.

Beth Avary. 1971. Book illustration.

Avary’s works have also been shown in dozens of major invitational and juried shows at museums, galleries, conventions and festivals in the US, Mexico, Spain, Japan and Russia.

Beth Avary died on 4 May 2008. Two months later, examples of her work were exhibited at the Center for Integrated Systems, in Stanford, California, in a show which included works by three other artists: her son, Arthur (known for his digital art which “explores patterns and repetition in artwork throughout history”), Corina del Carmel and Diana Leone.

Aside: Beth and Don Avary were visited in Ajijic by Don’s brother Ned and his wife, Brigitte, and their young Manitoba-born son Roger Avary. Roger Avary is an accomplished Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and producer, who won a joint Oscar with Quentin Tarantino for their screenplay of Pulp Fiction (1994).

Acknowledgments

  • My sincere thanks to Kimi Avary Fallon and the late Don Avary for sharing their memories of their time in Ajijic with me.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Mar 132025
 

As we saw in a previous post—Wilhelm Schiess described Chapala in 1899—Dr Schiess (1869-1929), a Swiss doctor, visited Chapala briefly in 1899 with his brother, Ernst, and later published a detailed account of their trip.

After a quick visit to Guadalajara, and seeing Juanacatlán Falls, the brothers had taken a special carriage from Atequiza to Chapala on Wednesday 6 December, where they had lunch at the Hotel Arzapalo, overlooking the lake. One bottle of red wine later, the brothers decided not to stay overnight at the hotel, but to take a boat to Ocotlán. This turned out be be far more of an adventure than they had ever imagined.

We could have stayed overnight in Chapala and taken the stagecoach back tomorrow. The steamboat arrives in Chapala only very irregularly and is mainly intended for transporting goods from the ranchos on the southern shore, so we could not rely on it…. Ernst therefore negotiated with two boatmen who agreed to take us to Ocotlán for 8 pesos [4 dollars]. The innkeeper warned us about the boat trip, as we would be completely dependent on the unpredictable whims of the wind, and an unreliable companion might leave us stranded for days along the way. But as if by a sign from heaven, a strong west wind suddenly rose, and the two sailors assured us that we would reach Ocotlán by 8.00pm.

“At 3.40pm, we had loaded our luggage onto the boat and set sail. The innkeeper and the few remaining guests stood on the shore, waving their white handkerchiefs in farewell for a long time. Chapala is located near the western end of the lake, which is roughly the size of Lake Constance. From our wide, flat barge, we had a magnificent view of the mountain range enclosing the western side of the lake, at whose foot Chapala, with its charming villas, was beautifully situated. The sail was hoisted on the mast in the middle of the boat and secured to both sides. We had the wind coming directly from behind us, which could not have been more favorable, as these barges can only sail with the wind at their back. With the massive waves, our boat rocked dangerously in all directions, making it difficult to remain seated on the rickety little chairs that had been placed in the barge for us.

“The two mozos were barefoot, with their light manta trousers rolled up above mid-thigh. They steered the rudder and sang a few melancholic, monotonous Mexican tunes. The lake had a murky yellow color, but in the evening light, one could almost believe it was the clearest, most transparent water. Ernst and I grew quieter and quieter, a sense of unease creeping over us. We tossed our cigars overboard. I noticed my brother growing paler and paler, and I could feel the same happening to me. Cursed seasickness! We had crossed the ocean without trouble, even laughing at our suffering fellow passengers, and now—less than an hour on this lake—we had to admit that we, too, were not immune. We moved our chairs closer to the edge of the boat, and not in vain! Just as quickly as the sickness had come, it passed. The two mozos smiled slightly and advised us to smell a lemon—an infallible remedy for seasickness, they claimed. Half an hour later, Ernst’s cheeks were rosy again, and I felt as well as before.

“Unfortunately, the wind grew weaker, the waves subsided, and the lake became as smooth as a mirror. The sail was taken down. If we had already been making slow progress with a good wind, the heavy barge now barely moved at all.
The two Mexicans took up small, clumsy oars and began paddling. We stayed close to the northern shore, which was occasionally hilly, with scattered trees and a few cornfields. At 5.30pm, the sun set. In the west, long after darkness had fallen, a magnificent, grand glow remained, as if a colossal forest fire were raging in the distance. Gradually, even this fiery spectacle faded, leaving only the dark silhouettes of the mountains. Everything around us was pitch black. Aside from the monotonous, slow strokes of the oars, and the drowsy singing of the two sailors, there was no sound in this desolate expanse. The lake lay utterly calm and smooth, and we soon realized that reaching our destination that evening would be impossible.

“We consulted with our two guides about whether it might be best to land and wait until morning. However, our companions were absolutely opposed to this idea. They began telling stories of robbers—each more terrifying than the last—and no treasure in the world could persuade them to dock at the shore. One of them claimed that his uncle had been murdered by native Indians just a few days ago, and even the captain of the steamboat had fallen victim to these people only a few weeks earlier. Listening to these tales, a deep sense of unease crept over us.

“The first quarter moon stood high in the sky, occasionally casting its pale light through the clouds onto our little boat. The lake was lightly rippled again, reflecting the silver moonlight. The mozos encouraged us to lie down on the floor of the barge and sleep. But could we trust these two strong young men? The innkeeper had recommended them, and besides, they couldn’t have gotten rid of us without the crime becoming known afterward. Moreover, Ernst still had his revolver…. So, we spread blankets over the damp wooden floor, stretched out, and covered ourselves as best we could. Our hard suitcases served as pillows. A sip of cognac, a piece of chocolate, a lump of sugar, and a small slice of sausage made up our frugal supper. Suddenly, Ernst, who was sleeping right next to me, jolted up in fright. He had dreamed that a mozo was leaning over him, trying to slit his throat. Instinctively, he stretched out a hand in defense—only to realize that the mozo was merely climbing over him to hoist the sail, with no sinister intentions. But just as the sail was raised, the wind died down again, forcing the Mexicans to keep stepping over us repeatedly. Finally, around 1.30am, even they grew tired. Their monotonous singing ceased, and we drifted into a small bay without landing. The two mozos lay down to sleep—one at the front of the boat, the other at the back.”

Terry-map-Chapala

Source: Terry’s Mexico Handbook (1909)

The Schiess brothers survived the night, and woke up the following morning to find that:

Our barge lay motionless in the bay, not far from the shore. Heavy clouds covered the sky, except for a narrow blue-green strip on the eastern horizon. Then, the sun rose in an absolutely magnificent display. A vast fire spread across the entire mountain range and reflected in the lake, which took on a brilliant green hue. This dreamlike illumination lasted only a few minutes before vanishing completely. It began to rain, and for a brief moment, two massive rainbows arched across a large part of the lake in the west. Soon after, the sun disappeared behind thick clouds. The mountains darkened and were later partially shrouded in mist. We woke our two companions and continued our journey, staying close to the shore. Our only provisions for breakfast were a small tin of sardines…. With the help of the oars, we made slow progress. Whenever the lake’s shallow depth near the shore allowed, the boatmen used long poles to push off the lakebed, which helped us move forward more efficiently. Ernst played the harmonica, and the two mozos sang.

“Each time we passed an indigenous settlement, the mozos made a tremendous racket, shouting for eggs and tortillas. In front of the huts, we saw a few indigenous people, wearing nothing but cloaks made of maize straw, busy piling up corn. They paid no attention to our pleas or, at best, called back that they had nothing to spare. Several small villages, hidden among the greenery, came into view. Their huts were made entirely of maize straw. Here and there, cows grazed on the dry meadows. We caught up with a sailboat similar to ours and bought a few cigarettes from the boatmen. This boat, which we soon left far behind, had already been traveling from Chapala for three days, so we had to consider ourselves lucky to have come so far in such a short time.

“At 10 o’clock, we spotted two miserable straw huts on land and an old woman hurrying back and forth between them. Summoning their courage, the mozos asked Ernst to keep the revolver ready, then—miraculously—went ashore. They returned beaming with warm tortillas made from red maize and a few fresh eggs. We devoured this dry breakfast with great appetite, though it had been slightly dampened by the rain. It was pouring in torrents, and water streamed from our hats as if from gutters. Trees stood deep in the water along the shore, their crowns dipping far into the lake. The southern shore was no longer visible—thick veils of mist shrouded the mountains.

“Around 11.30am, we finally arrived in the bay of Ocotlán, which is bordered to the east by a rocky mountain and to the west by some hills covered with cornfields. It was too late to catch the train to Zamora that day, but that hardly mattered, as we first needed to dry off. The rain had gradually seeped through the wool blankets, leaving us completely soaked. In the bay, the lake gradually took on a lagoon-like appearance. A vast number of ducks could be seen here. Passing through trees and reeds, we reached the mouth of the Río Grande.”

They finally made it to Ocotlán at around 1.30pm:

“Here, in one of the canals, lay the steamboat, which was built similarly to the Mississippi riverboats, with a colossal paddle wheel at the back, although it only had about half of its original paddles left. We made some purchases in the plaza, including candles to have festive lighting in the evening. At the Mexican hotel, where there was only one other guest besides us, we immediately sent the landlady to the kitchen, and soon we were served something warm to eat.”

After a meal and a good night’s sleep, they continued on their way:

Friday, December 8th. At 6.45am, the thermometer showed +12°C, and it felt quite warm to us now that we were in completely dry clothes again…. We climbed up the church tower; from a platform, under the bells, and surrounded by the various domes of the church, we had a wide, open view of the entire landscape. To the south, we could see a shining strip, the Chapala Lake, and beyond it, the beautifully shaped mountains. At our feet, the Rio Grande meandered with its green banks through the plain, gradually dissolving into numerous lagoons. Before us lay the plaza planted with orange trees, where a vast number of people were currently gathered. Beyond the flat rooftops of the houses, numerous hills could be seen, only sparsely wooded…. After lunch, we took the tram to the station, about 10 minutes away. . . .

“At around 1 o’clock, it was +21°C at the station. The train took us through a flat area with many lagoons, a splendid hunting ground for duck hunters. Here and there, we could see green fields. In La Barca, where there was again a tram connection to the town, we had a few minutes’ stop. What a scene it was at the station! Mexicans and their wives, along with a large number of children, walked from one train window to another, carrying baskets and trays, hawking their goods. You could buy sandwiches with half chickens, radishes, oranges, beer, goat cheese, tortillas—all at a cheap price. Mexicans are masters at quickly devouring massive bites, and the baskets emptied out rapidly. Blind and lame beggars, singing and playing harps, were led by their wives from one compartment to another. The heart-wrenching and ear-piercing songs had their effect, as copper coins were often thrown from the windows.”

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Wilhelm Schiess. 1902. Quer durch Mexiko vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Mar 062025
 

A 1958 article titled “Art colony in Mexico will be high and dry” focused on whether Ajijic’s artistic community could survive if an alarming prediction made by a Mexican engineer came true. The engineer, after visiting the lake, gave it “just five years more of existence.” Fortunately, this did not come true—at least not yet—and the village art community continues to thrive.

Though the startling prediction proved inaccurate, Herbert J. Mangham, the author of the article, offers some interesting insights into the Ajijic artistic community of almost 70 years ago, which we will examine shortly. 

Mangham-1958-title

But, first, who was Herbert Mangham? Fortunately for me, and saving me hours of research, Terence Hanley, author of a blog devoted to “Weird Tales and other weird fiction and science fiction magazines of the pulp era” has already published the results of a deep dive into Mangham’s life.

Summarizing Hanley, Mangham was a pen name of Herbert Joseph Maughiman, born in Des Moines, Iowa, on 27 April 1896. He was only a child when his family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he took journalism classes at the University of Missouri. After serving in the U.S. Army medical corps for a year (1918-1919) he joined the staff of the Kansas City Star and was soon earning extra money by submitting jokes, poems and stories to various magazines, including Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, Snappy Stories, Argosy Allstory Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post and Weird Tales. In addition, he had several pieces published in The New Yorker between 1925 and 1942.

Chapala, July 1950. Photo: Dr. Erich Fred Legner. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, from University of California Riverside

Chapala, July 1950. Photo: Dr. Erich Fred Legner. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, from University of California Riverside. The building at the right hand edge of the photo is Capilla de Lourdes; the building in the center is Villa Montecarlo.

Maughiman was also an accomplished pianist who played at cinemas, night clubs and other venues. He spent extended periods of time living in Europe, Mexico and Central America, and had been living for several years in Guatemala City, before dying and being buried there on 14 September 1967.

Maughiman appears to have spent much of the 1950s in Mexico. His article “Dim-Wits over Mexico” appeared in the December 1951 issue of Vogue, and the following year “The Life of Bobby Ortiz y Riley” was published by Prairie Schooner, which included this biographical note of the author:

“Herbert J. Mangham gives his address as “c/o American Consulate, Mexico, D.F.” We have this note from him: “I was born in Des Moines, schooled in Salina, Kansas, and Kansas City, before finished off at Kansas City Junior College and the University of Missouri. To support myself I have been pianist, journalist, shipyard timekeeper, bridge instructor, artist’s agent and model (they liked my bones). My writings first appeared, almost simultaneously in Black Cat and Nathan & Mencken’s Smart Set. In the past few months I have appeared in periodicals as varied as Vogue and the Farmer’s Magazine (Canada).”

Writing to the editor of the Kansas City Star in 1954, Maughiman claimed that:

My fame is thin and localized, and my fortune is contained in a slim envelope of war bonds. But my life is richly threaded with travel, good friends, radiant women, varied foods and adventure.” (McCarty, 1967)

Lake Chapala was suffering in 1958. The lake was still recovering from its lowest ever level three years earlier, and, as Evan Atkinson pointed out at the time, “The water is clouded with mud and, as its level has dropped ten feet in the last few years, mud flats up to a mile wide ring its shoreline. There are no real beaches and the coagulated slime of weeds and lilies squelch any pleasure from aquatic sports.”

Ajijic lakeshore. ca 1957. Photo: Jacques Van Belle.

Ajijic lakeshore. ca 1957. Photo: Jacques Van Belle.

In his 1958 article about the art colony in Ajijic, Maughiman reported that:

Ajijic soon will be fronting on a desert waste instead of one of the world’s most beautiful lakes, according to a Mexican engineer who had just visited that region. He gives Chapala, Mexico’s largest lake, just five years more of existence.”

According to the author, “the high saturation points” for artists drawn to Mexico are Taxco, Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende, and:

The composition of these exotic Greenwich Villages is the same—a few good painters and writers, a number of second-raters and would-be’s, a shifting body of students in uniform (beards, heavy spectacles, sandals, dirndls, levis, whatever is modish at the moment), artisans, keepers of shoppes, and a few people who can live permanently or temporarily on private incomes. Most of the people who give the colonies their character are Americans . . .
“The colonists’ association with the natives is confined largely to shopkeepers and the helper classes, whose low charges permit a semi-feudalistic way of life that was unknown to most of them back home.”

As regards the demise of the lake, Maughiman explained that:

The engineer quoted is not the ultimate authority, but most reports are equally pessimistic. Although the lake level rose 11 feet in 1955 as a result of unusual rainfalls, it now continues to recede. … Since 1944, Chapala has lost five billion cubic meters of water, uncovering 45,000 acres of land. This land, a source of conflict between the farmers and influential politicians, is temporarily rich farming country; but it becomes salty in time.”

And, in the worst case scenario?

The country may readjust by resettlement and adaptation, but the colonists can scarcely readjust to a vista of salt waste in place of a much-hymned lake. They will have to pack up their levis and flit.”

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Terence E. Hanley. 2016. “Herbert J. Mangham (1896-1967),” Blog post at Artists & Writers in The Unique Magazine, 13 Jan 2016.
  • Terence E. Hanley. 2023. “Herbert J. Mangham (1896-1967)-The Basket.” Blog post at Artists & Writers in The Unique Magazine, 2 May 2023.
  • Herbert J. Mangham. 1951. “Dim-Wits over Mexico.” Vogue, December 1951.
  • Herbert J. Mangham. 1952. “The Life of Bobby Ortiz y Riley.” Prairie Schooner, Vol. 26, #1 (Spring 1952), 44-55.
  • Herbert J. Mangham. 1958. “Art colony in Mexico will be high and dry.” The Birmingham News, 26 Mar 1958, 26.
  •  Ira B. McCarty. 1967. “About Town.” Kansas City Times, 28 Sep 1967, 73.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Feb 272025
 

Milton Avery has been widely recognized as one of the most famous modernist painters born in the U.S. There is little point in recapping his extraordinary career and achievements here. But, for anyone unfamiliar with his life and work, here are two good starting points:

By way of establishing a basic time line, Milton Clark Avery was born in Altmar, New York, on 7 March 1885. Avery moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1905, where he studied briefly at the Connecticut League of Art Students, and then moved to New York in 1925, where the following year he married fellow artist Sally Michel (1902-2003). The couple shared joint studio space and worked together. Michel subsequently focused more on promoting her husband’s career than her own. Her decision to undertake commercial illustrations to keep the family afloat allowed her husband to devote himself to his art.

Avery, largely self taught, is best known for developing a simplified style of painting featuring broad, contoured shapes with veiled fields of color. Avery was close friends with, and influenced, many younger artists, including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman and Helen Frankenthaler, all now recognized as major Abstract Expressionists.

Milton Avery. 1945. Seaside.

Milton Avery. 1945. Seaside.

Avery had his first solo museum exhibition, at the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington D.C., in 1944. Shortly afterwards, Paul Rosenberg, who had fled France to establish a gallery in New York, agreed to buy twenty-five of Avery’s paintings twice a year. This might have been a daunting commitment for some artists. But Avery was never short of ideas, all competing to be the first to reach canvas, and he completed almost all his paintings the same day he started them.

This success enabled Avery to travel. In 1946, perhaps inspired by the magnificent 1940 exhibition of Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Avery, with his wife and daughter, spent three months in Mexico.

Milton Avery. Crucifixion.

Milton Avery. 1946. Crucifixion.

Among the major paintings inspired by this visit was “Crucifixion.” When it came up for auction in 2011, Sotheby’s estimate was between 1.0 and 1.5 million dollars. The painting is based on a woman praying in front of a crucifix at the Parroquia, the main church in San Miguel de Allende.

Though the family spent most of their time in San Miguel, they also took brief trips elsewhere, to places such as Mexico City. Avery did numerous watercolors in Mexico, and also made “made many quick sketches in small notebooks, observing specific colors and atmospheric conditions,” which he would refer back to when painting oils once he was back in New York.

One of these side trips was to Chapala, as recalled, shortly after his passing, by his wife when she was interviewed by Dorothy Seckler:

Milton was very impressed with the beauty of Mexico because it is such a dramatic and beautiful country. And we went down there with no particular itinerary. But on the way down, we met a couple and they were going to San Miguel de Allende. So they said, “Why don’t you come along, it’s this lovely little colonial town.”

So we went intending to stay overnight and we stayed six weeks. And so we met a lot of people there and made a lot of new friends and went sketching every day. Milton did a whole series of watercolors while he was down in Mexico.

He said, though, that Mexico was so picturesque in itself that it was very difficult to make a painting. It was so pictorial.
. . . But even so. When we got back to New York he did a series of paintings from these watercolors, some of which I think were very stunning.

. . . and we left San Miguel and went down to Guadalajara [Chapala] which was on this great lake where they find a lot of the pre-Columbian idols because people used to throw the idols into the lake there to appease the gods. And actually, one of the nicest paintings—one of Milton’s minor masterpieces I think—was “Mexican Seaside” which was just shown in London and that was done from a sketch he made by Lake Chapala.
. . . [in] the review in the London Times, the critic said that this was undoubtedly a masterpiece. And the interesting thing was it was done in ’46, but it’s very much like the late things he did in Provincetown in 1960. Amazing. I mean it was like, in terms of colors and shapes it was like a forerunner. It had that same type of quality.”

  • Can you help? Do you have an image of “Mexican Seaside,” or know its current location?

Three years after visiting Mexico, Avery had a heart attack, from which he never fully recovered, though he continued to paint, and was able to visit Europe for the first time. He had a second heart attack ten years later and died in New York on 3 January 1965.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Feb 192025
 

There are not many genuinely old buildings left in Ajijic. Most of those that survived into the 1970s have since been modified or remodeled beyond recognition. One exception is the building at Morelos #8, one block back from the pier, which housed (until mid-February 2025) the store Mi México. It is a rare survivor, largely unchanged for the past 80 years or more.

Mi Mexico, 1982. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Wagner

Mi Mexico, 1982. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Wagner

I don’t know for sure who built it or precisely how old the building actually is. But I do know—based on my research into the influence of foreigners at Lake Chapala—that this building was acquired in 1937 as a vacation home by U.S. entrepreneur Louis E. Stephens, then living in Mexico City. Stephens had first learned about the delights of living in Mexico—and of Ajijic in particular—from screenplay writer Charles Kaufman, who had lived in the village in 1929. Kaufman’s novel Fiesta in Manhattan (1939), which tells the story of a young village musician and his wife who are encouraged to leave their lives at Lake Chapala for the bright lights of Manhattan, is actually dedicated by its author to the people of Ajijic.

Stephens and his then-wife Annette Margolis (later known as Annette Nancarrow, artist and assistant to José Clemente Orozco) were exceptionally well-connected. They were members of the literary, artistic and cultural elite of Mexico City, and often offered the use of their Ajijic property to friends.

The most significant of these friends (from our narrow perspective) was U.S. fashion designer Helen Beth Kirtland, whose husband was a noted Mexico City rare books dealer. When Kirtland decided to separate from her husband, Stephens offered her and her three young children the use of his Ajijic home.

Mi Mexico, 1996. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Wagner

Mi Mexico, 1996. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Wagner

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Their first visit in 1946 was for only a short time, but a year later Kirtland moved to Ajijic permanently with her children and never looked back. She founded Telares Ajijic (Ajijic Hand Looms), employed weavers and, through enterprise, good fortune and hard work, built up a highly successful business. She also opened her own store, Mi México. Her children all grew up in the village.

After completing college in California, her daughter, Katie Goodridge Ingram, born in Mexico City in 1938, returned to Ajijic and ran the Galería del Lago from 1975 until it closed in 1977. Ingram then opened her own gallery as part of Mi México, which she ran from 1978 to 1983. Ingram, an award-winning poet, later wrote an absorbing and beautifully written memoir of her childhood in Mexico City and Ajijic—According to Soledad, memories of a Mexican childhood—which garnered rave reviews following its publication in 2020.

Many other famous artists and authors have vacationed in or visited the Mi México building over the years. They include Algerian-born painter Violette Mège and her award-winning artist husband, Michael Baxte, in the 1940s. And, because of Kirtland, German poet Gustav Regler lived and wrote here in the late 1940s, and Erik Erikson (Young Man Luther) did so in the 1950s. Helen Kirtland’s tocaya and good friend Helen O’Gorman (wife of architect-artist Juan O’Gorman) visited more than once.

Mi Mexico, 2024. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Wagner

Mi Mexico, 2024. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Wagner

Kirtland later married American sculptor Mort Carl, who deserves the credit for building Ajijic’s first tennis court in an empty lot immediately behind the Mi México building. Carl’s work became better known after he abandoned Kirtland and Ajijic to return to the U.S. And, much more recently, I’m reliably informed that novelist Edgar Taylor Morris lived at Mi México while writing All the Clouds’ll roll away.

Mi México has now relocated to Riberas del Pilar, but this Ajijic landmark’s historical, literary and artistic heritage deserve to be recognized for many years to come. The building’s owners want to sell. Any ‘renovation’ would need prior approval from the Chapala municipality, which has apparently promised to preserve the facade. Will local authorities step up when needed to ensure its future? Only time will tell.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Feb 132025
 

Dwight Furness (1861-1924) was a wealthy and influential Chicago investor who grew up in Furnessville (named for his family) in Indiana. He arrived in Guanajuato as a 26-year-old—to represent a Missouri-based mining company—before quickly branching out on his own, buying and trading mineral ores. Furness was appointed U.S. consular agent at Guanajuato in 1889, and retained this position until 1907.

In 1890, Furness married Anna Rodgers, a Methodist missionary. The couple had ten children (five sons and five daughters), two of whom died as infants.

Furness, who gained a reputation as a fair and benevolent businessman, built up several highly profitable general merchandise and minerals trading companies, conducting more than $2 million worth of business a year. His business interests ranged from mines to land and financing, and extended across several states, including Aguascalientes, Durango and Jalisco. In 1902 he paid Ignacio Castellanos and his wife, Esther Tapia Ruíz, $200,000 pesos in gold for 7000 acres of land, including a section of lakefront known as Rivera Castellanos.

Dwight Furness. c 1907. Hotel Ribera Castellanos. (Fig 6-6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History.)

Dwight R. Furness. c 1907. Hotel Ribera Castellanos. (Fig 6-6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History.)

While Furness planned to farm most of the land, he recognized the enormous economic and tourist potential of Rivera Castellanos, “one of the finest scenic spots in Mexico” with “nearly three miles of lake and river front.” It was ideally located, easily accessible from the main Irapuato-Guadalajara railroad.

Furness began planning a modern “summer colony” and a large “commodious” lakefront hotel which would take full advantage of some nearby thermal springs. This was the first serious competition for Lake Chapala’s earliest purpose-built hotel, the Hotel Arzapalo, completed in Chapala in 1898.

A correspondent for The Mexican Herald was immediately enthusiastic. After pointing out that “in winter months people of the tableland cities go down to Veracruz or Tampico for sea bathing and boating,” but that summer months could be uncomfortable both in the cities and on the coast, the journalist extolled the Rivera Castellanos’ wonderful year-round climate:

There is no finer all-the-year-round climate than that which may be enjoyed along the shores of Lake Chapala. The air is itself a tonic, the lake breezes invigorating, and the worn out business man, or society woman, finds in a few days that the system is generously renewed.”

To finance the project, Furness incorporated the Lake Chapala Agricultural and Improvement Company in Phoenix, Arizona, in July 1902. The company raised $600,000 dollars in capital, and Furness began building an “American style” town and hotel. Construction of the first homes and the Hotel Ribera began in the summer of 1904.

The Hotel Ribera, overlooking the lake, opened in 1906 and was fully functional by 1907. Banner advertisements in advance of its inauguration used the tag line, “The Riviera of Mexico,” a line designed to strike a chord with the well-heeled clientele being targeted. The hotel, about five kilometers by road south of Ocotlán and approximately the same distance west of Jamay, billed itself as the “Sportsman’s Paradise,” the perfect headquarters for hunting during the winter season, especially since the area had no mosquitos and no malaria.

Soon after the hotel opened, Dwight Furness’ eldest son, Dwight Rodgers Furness (1892-1960) used his then amateur photography skills to take a series of promotional postcards showing the hotel and its surroundings. (Dwight Rodgers Furness subsequently studied in the US, became a professional photographer, and was chosen in 1918 to head the pioneering U.S.A. Aerial Photography School started by George Eastman.)

The earliest Dwight R Furness postcards of Hotel Ribera date from about 1907. They are printed on several different papers, including an AZO paper sold only between 1907 and 1909, a VELOX paper dating to that same narrow time period, and an AZO paper sold between 1904 and 1918. A small number, presumably reprints, are on ARTUR paper which was not sold prior to 1911.

Dwight Furness. ca 1907. View from bridge, Ocotlán.

Dwight R. Furness. ca 1907. View from bridge, Ocotlán.

Most tourists staying at the Hotel Ribera reached Ocotlán via the Central Mexican Railroad. After alighting at Ocotlán station, they took a short boat ride to the hotel, passing under this bridge (which spans the Santiago River) into the lake and then heading east, hugging the lakeshore to the hotel.

Furness-Postcard-Credit-Imprint

Almost all known Furness postcards have this imprint on the reverse

Almost all Dwight R. Furness cards relate to the Hotel Ribera, with images of the plant-lined driveway, different buildings, hotel interiors and various views of the hotel from the lake. Other cards show moonlight over the lake, the view from the main bridge in Ocotlán, and the main street of Jamay, the nearest village to the hotel. Furness also took a photograph of a “Mexican water carrier,” published as a postcard by Imprenta Bautista, León, Guanajuato.

Dwight Furness. ca 1907. Jamay. (Published by Alba y Fernández, Guadalajara)

Dwight R. Furness. ca 1907. Jamay. (Published by Alba y Fernández, Guadalajara)

The quality of the composition and printing of many of Dwight R. Furness’ early photographs, taken when he was a teenager, is rarely as high as that achieved by professional photographers of the time, one of whom—Winfield Scott—lived very close to Hotel Ribera. Either his father wanted to save money or he preferred not to commission Scott because of his rival business start-up. (Scott, the official photographer for the Mexican Central railroad, and perhaps the first person to advertise the Lake Chapala climate as the “best on earth,”settled in Ocotlán in 1901 and tried to establish his own, rival, hotel and “Inland Sea Boating Club.” In a curious later twist of fate, Scott—despite not taking the early promotional photos of Hotel Rivera—became the hotel’s manager in 1919.

The Hotel Ribera gained a reputation as “Mexico’s best resort.” Rooms with full board were between US$1.50-2.00) a day in 1907 when two well-heeled federal politicians—Vice-President Ramón Corral and Finance Secretary José Yves Limantour—stayed overnight before taking a steamship ride to spend a few nights in Chapala. Such patronage ensured that The Hotel Ribera Castellanos quickly became a highly desirable and popular destination, and all manner of politicians and celebrities vacationed there over the next decade.

Soon after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Furness decided to spend more time in the U.S. and sold the hotel to Enrique Langenscheidt Schwartz, a prominent and well-connected German businessman based in Guanajuato. It was Enrique’s son who hired Winfield Scott as manager in 1919.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Arizona) 24 Jul 1902, 4.
  • El Mundo Ilustrado: 5 Oct 1913.
  • Jalisco Times: 7 May 1904; 4 Nov 1904; 8 Nov 1907; 29 Mar 1907; 27 Sep 1907; 17 Jan 1908; 1 May 1908.
  • The Mexican Herald: 18 Feb 1902, 3; 21 May 1902, 2; 31 May 1902, 4; 4 Jan 1907; 13 May 1907; 27 Sep 1907, 8; 5 Jun 1909. 5 Sep 1909, 3; 27 June 1910, 5; 24 Aug 1911, 7;
  • El Abogado Cristiano Ilustrado: 24 Dec 1903, 16.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Feb 062025
 

Dr Wilhelm Schiess (1869-1929) visited Chapala briefly in 1899, during a winter trip to Mexico with his brother, Ernst. His detailed account of their trip, with dozens of photographs, was published in 1902 as Quer durch Mexiko vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean (“Across Mexico from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean”). It was well received at the time as an accurate, first-hand account of several little-known parts of Mexico. Sadly—and presumably because the book was never translated—Schiess’s work has received relatively little attention.

Carl Wilhelm Schiess was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 12 July 1869 to Prof. Dr. Heinrich Schiess, a well-known ophthalmologist in that city, and his wife, Rosalie Gemuseus.

Schiess had already completed his medical training before visiting the US and Mexico with his brother in 1899. The two young men entered Mexico via New Orleans, before traveling by rail to Torreón and Durango, and crossing the Western Sierra Madre to Mazatlán. From there, they took a steamer to San Blas, and then proceeded to cross the country from west to east, via Tepic, Tequila, Guadalajara, Chapala, Zamora, Uruapan, Pátzcuaro, Morelia, Mexico City and Amecameca to Veracruz, before returning north via Orizaba, Cordoba, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. Quite the itinerary to complete in just two months!

The Schiess brothers had lots of adventures along the way. Like many other early travelers in Mexico, they even climbed to the summit of Popocatepetl Volcano, and photographed the interior of its crater. They visited remote mines and explored archeological sites, including Xochicalco.

The brothers arrived in Guadalajara on Monday 4 December 1899. The following morning, they left the city to view Juanacatlán Falls. They were very impressed by their grandeur, and the book includes photographs of the falls themselves, of a group of women washing clothes below the falls, and this photo of a then pristine River Santiago (aka Río Grande), immediately above the falls. After a full day exploring, they returned to their hotel in Guadalajara.

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Río Grande at Juanacatlán. (opp. p. 137)

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Río Grande at Juanacatlán. (opp. p. 137)

The next day (Wednesday 6 December) they left the city by train en route to Chapala:

We set off at 10:20. Since our journey would not be long, we sat in second class. By 11.30am, we arrived in Atequiza, where the temperature was only 12°C. Back home, with such a cloudy sky, one would surely predict rain soon. However, no one here believed in rain at this time of year; instead, they assured us that the sun would soon shine again.

“Behind the train station, an eight-horse stagecoach was already waiting, along with a half-open carriage drawn by five mules. We took our seats in the carriage, which we had entirely to ourselves. We galloped off, and although this road seemed smooth compared to those we had previously encountered, we were still jolted and shaken considerably and had to hold on tightly to avoid being thrown from the carriage. As we sped along, one of the postillions frequently jumped down from the coach, ran as fast as he could alongside the carriage, and urged the mules to an even faster pace with his whip and shouts. The second driver swung his endlessly long whip from the coach seat.

“We raced along, always closely following the mail cart, passing over the rough cobblestones of Atequiza. The road led up and down hills, with little vegetation in sight—only a few bare trees with white blossoms here and there. An hour before reaching Chapala, we occasionally caught glimpses of the lake far below us. At a furious pace, we raced down the hill, and the two white church towers of Chapala approached with a completely different speed than the towers of Guadalajara had a few days ago. That time, we sat on exhausted animals, whereas today, five lively mules were pulling us along. At 1.30pm, we arrived in Chapala and stopped in front of the large, comfortably furnished hotel.”

The hotel was the Hotel Arzapalo, where:

In the spacious, European-style dining hall on the ground floor, we enjoyed our lunch and, from our table, had a magnificent view of the lake through the small orange garden in front of the hotel. The hotel is located directly on the shore. A bottle of red wine gave us the courage to ponder further adventures. Besides us, only a small family had taken a seat in the otherwise empty hall, giving the place a rather deserted appearance. The season had long since ended. In summer, many families, mainly from Guadalajara, come here to spend their time rowing and swimming. The sandy beach is perfect for children. The Chapala Lake is said to have a very mild climate, yet we happened to arrive on one of the least pleasant days imaginable. Now, people are even complaining about the cold!”

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Chapala. (opp. p153)

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Chapala. (opp. p. 153) The distant building on the left of the image is Villa Montecarlo, built by Septimus Crowe. In the middle is Villa Tlalocan, completed in 1896. The white residence on the right is Casa Capetillo.

Chapala itself is a small village, whose main street, consisting of closely built small houses, runs westward from the hotel, going up and down the hills along the lake. It is separated from the lake by beautiful gardens, where magnificent specimens of evergreen trees, blooming oleanders, blue morning glories, and red geraniums can be found. Small side alleys lead from the main street down to the lake. Along the lakefront, as well as partially in the water, there are trees through which one has a lovely view of the four or five stately villas of the village.

“Next to the hotel is the steamboat landing, which extends into the lake. It is planted with young trees and furnished with well-maintained benches for visitors. There is no daily regular steamboat service, even in summer. Behind the hotel rises a brown, barren hill that stretches westward along the lake. Along the village street, near the small water ponds, we noticed some women washing and bathing, who covered themselves upon our approach. The villas, with their terraces, offered a rather charming view from the lake, and in fine weather, living here must certainly be pleasant. East of the hotel, near the lake, stands the large white church, which presents a picturesque sight. Now and then, the sun shimmered through the dense clouds, bringing a bit of life to the otherwise deserted village. On the southern side of the lake, as well as in the west, high mountains could be seen everywhere. The lake has a somewhat dark and wild appearance—at least under this lighting—yet one still sees orange and banana trees. At 2.30pm, the temperature was 19°C, while the water measured 18°C. However, today we had no desire to go for a swim.”

After considering their options, the brothers decided not to stay overnight in Chapala, but to take a boat that afternoon to Ocotlán:

We could have stayed overnight in Chapala and taken the stagecoach back tomorrow. The steamboat arrives in Chapala only very irregularly and is mainly intended for transporting goods from the ranchos on the southern shore, so we could not rely on it. The only way to continue directly was to hire a sailing boat. Ernst therefore negotiated with two boatmen who agreed to take us to Ocotlán for 8 pesos.”

We will examine the book’s lengthy description of their boat ride to Ocotlán, which turned out to be far more of an adventure than they had expected, in a future post.

Links to a Swiss castle

Carl Wilhelm Scheiss is the unexpected link between Chapala and a famous Swiss castle. In 1900, shortly after his return to Switzerland, his aunt, Mrs. Rosina Magdalena Gemuseus, purchased Spiez Castle on Lake Thun in the Swiss canton of Bern, and invited Scheiss and his wife, Helene Schiess-Frey (1882–1962), to live there. In July 1900, Schiess opened a medical practice based in the castle, parts of which date back to the tenth century. He lived in the castle for several years, with office hours every morning to 11.00am, and clinics for eye diseases every Tuesday and Friday morning.

The village of Spiez grew rapidly: roads were improved and villagers added a new stone church and many new homes. In about 1906, close to the time his son was born, Schiess commissioned a firm of Basel architects to build him a large family home in the village, with an attached medical office.

In 1907, Schiess’s aunt sold him some of the outlying castle properties, including the old church, rectory, manager’s house, cherry orchard, vineyards and an area of forest. Schiess continued to live quite modestly, accustomed to making home visits to patients by bicycle. Contemporaries described him as a friendly, helpful and keen doctor, who worked tirelessly without any break during the terrible 1918 flu epidemic.

Following the death of his aunt on 3 February 1919, Schiess inherited the castle itself. But the upkeep was costly, and Schiess soon found himself having to sell valuables from the castle to cover ongoing maintenance expenses. By 1922 he started looking for a potential purchaser. In the absence of finding anyone, a group of villagers established a foundation five years later with the idea of preserving the castle for future generations. On 14 August 1929, barely two weeks after the Spiez Castle Foundation took over the castle, Schiess died unexpectedly of heart failure.

The castle and gardens opened to the public in June 1930 and are now used for conferences, concerts, exhibitions and other events. Curiously, it is apparently not known which precise rooms of the castle were once used by the doctor and his wife.

Note: Translations of Schiess’ text are by the author and were AI-assisted.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center. The fascinating stories behind the first vacation homes and hotels in Chapala are the subject of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants, translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes.

Sources

  • Tony Burton. 2016. “A 1902 travel account, and unexpected link between Mexico and a Swiss castle.” Post dated 25 February 2016 on Geo-Mexico.com.
  • Wilhelm Schiess. 1902. Quer durch Mexiko vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
  • Alfred Stettler. 2004. “75 Jahre Stiftung Schloss Spiez: Die Anfänge” in Jahrbuch: vom Thuner und Brienzersee, Uferschutzverband Thuner- und Brienzersee.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jan 302025
 

Commercial illustrator Fritz (Fred) Alseth (1924-2006) resided at Lake Chapala in the late 1980s. During his time at the lake, he provided illustrations for El Ojo del Lago, and also for a series of cards promoting the local area, from Chapala to San Juan Cosalá, with an emphasis on hotels and tourist locations.

Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.

Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.

Alseth’s sketches for the cards are all dated 1988. They provide a fun way to look back at what the area was like at that time. The images in the gallery are arranged in approximate order from west to east, starting with San Juan Cosalá and ending with Chapala Haciendas. Enjoy!

Alseth-1988-SJC-Balneario
Alseth-1988-SJC-Balneario
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Danza-del-Sol
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Danza-del-Sol
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-street-scene
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-street-scene
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Mi-Mexico
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Mi-Mexico
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Posada-Ajijic-3
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Posada-Ajijic-3
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Posada-Ajijic-2
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Posada-Ajijic-2
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Plaza-and-Chapel
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Plaza-and-Chapel
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Plaza
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Plaza
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Restaurant-El-Meson
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Restaurant-El-Meson
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Mariana
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Mariana
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-La-Floresta
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-La-Floresta
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Real-de-Chapala-2
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Real-de-Chapala-2
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Real-de-Chapala
Alseth-1988-Ajijic-Hotel-Real-de-Chapala
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Chapala-Hotel-Nido
Alseth-1988-Chapala-Hotel-Nido
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Chapala-trees
Alseth-1988-Chapala-trees
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.
Alseth-1988-Chapala-Haciendas-hotel
Alseth-1988-Chapala-Haciendas-hotel
Drawing by Fritz Alseth. 1988.

Note regarding copyright. Attempts to identify the copyright owner of these images have been unsuccessful. Use of the low resolution images in this post is believed to fall under the fair dealing exemption, section 29 of copyright legislation in Canada.

Acknowledgments

  • My sincere thanks to business consultant Alejandro Wagner (the owner of Mi México store) and to fellow writer and long-time Ajijic resident Dale Hoyt Palfrey for supplying the illustrations used in this post.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.