Dwight Furness and his son’s postcards of Hotel Ribera near Ocotlán

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 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 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.

Almost all known Furness postcards have this imprint on the reverse

Almost all 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.

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

The quality of the composition and printing of Furness’ photographs, taken when he was a teenager, is not as high as that achieved by professional photographers of the time, one of whom—Winfield Scott—lived nearby. 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, had settled in Ocotlán in 1901 and was trying tried to establish his own rival hotel and “Inland Sea Boating Club.” Scott, incidentally, may have been the first person to advertise the Lake Chapala climate as the “best on earth.”)

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.

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.

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).

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