Forestry Department

About forestry service, 95422, Clearlake, CA, US, California

Kelseyville is a unincorporated community in Lake County, California, located six miles (9.7 kilometers) southeast of Lakeport, at an elevation of 1,384 feet (422 meters). For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined that community as a census-designated place (CDP). Its population was 3,382 according to the 2020 United States census. == History == === Name === The area has been formerly designated by European American settlers Kelsey or Kelsey Creek, after Andrew Kelsey, one of the first Anglo-American settlers in Lake County, and his brother Benjamin Kelsey. Both men, along with Charles Stone and E.D. Shirland, acquired Salvador Vallejo's livestock in the Clear Lake area in 1847. Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone were killed in 1849 in an uprising against him by bands of Wappo and Eastern Pomo whom they had enslaved. This episode led to the Bloody Island Massacre in May 1850. The town was also sometimes designated Uncle Sam after Mount Uncle Sam, the name soldiers gave to Mount Konocti when they set up camp there in 1850. The Kelseyville name first appears in records in the 1860s, the result of lobbying on the part of William and Barthena Kelsay, who arrived with the Harriman Party in Lake County in 1861, "in honor of their Kelsey cousins". Voter registration records list the town as "Kelsey" in the 1860s, and the area is designated "Kelsey Creek" in the 1870 U.S. Census while voter records list "Kelseyville" in the same decade, that name also appearing in the 1880 U.S. Census.