General Info

Obexer's Boat Company is a family-owned and operated full Service Marina on Lake Tahoe's beautiful West Shore. We provide Ramp Facilities, Travel Lift & Forklift Launching, Slip & Buoy Season Rentals, Summer & Winter Storage Facilities, Certified Mechanics on Duty, a Restoration Shop for all your wood and fiberglass repair, and a Showroom, which houses everything from Parts and Accessories to Buoy Boats and Obexer-Wear! Establishing a commercial enterprise at Lake Tahoe carries with it no guarantee of success. Many local ventures do not survive their first season, and to boast several decades in business is rare indeed. A notable exception to the rule is one west shore enterprise, the existence of which extends so far back into yesteryear that no one now living can recall when it wasn't a fixture of the Homewood landscape. Obexer's is the business qualified to make such a claim, tracing its beginnings to 1911 when its progenitor, Jacob P. Obexer, first laid his eyes on this beautiful lake. It was a long and improbable route that led Obexer to the shores of Lake Tahoe. Born May 9, 1886 in the Austrian-Italian border town of Pozen, "Jake" was an ambitious and restless young man who early abandoned his family's baking business for the more lucrative profession of waiter. By the age of 20, Jake had sewn his culinary apprenticeship by working in the restaurants of the finest hotels of Austria, France and Switzerland. But America was calling and by 1908 he had crossed the pond and landed in Boston where he found work on the staff of the Parker House, a grand establishment of the day. From there, he gravitated to New York where he worked in such distinguished hostelries as the Ritz-Carlton, Waldorf-Astoria and Plaza Hotel. By 1909, he had arrived in San Francisco where he renewed his employ as a waiter and worked in such elegant restaurants as the Palace, the St. Francis and the Fairmont. There the fine cuisine included mountain trout, the primary source of which was a lake called Tahoe located high in the Sierra 250 miles to the east. Endowed with an adventurous spirit, Obexer took advantage of an opportunity two years later to visit this pictorial paradise and his future was decided. "When I first saw the mountains, the sky and the waters of Tahoe, " he recalled in an interview for the Tahoe Tattler in 1935, "I knew I was on my way to anchor here for a lifetime." Obexer's chief obstacle to permanent relocation was employment, for at that time commercial enterprise at Tahoe was definitely a summer-only proposition. The resourceful newcomer soon found work as a commercial fisherman. However, decades of unregulated angling had seriously depleted the finny tribes, and in 1917 the industry was outlawed altogether. But Jake was determined to stay, and with the energy and exuberance typical of a true pioneer, he had soon hit upon a means of doing just that. By 1920, a postwar proliferation of privately owned automobiles and boats was creating a booming demand for petroleum products, and several oil companies were eager to establish themselves in the new market. Jake initially allied himself with Union Oil Company, but the partnership proved to be a brief one. The seasonal nature of Tahoe commerce meant that local fuel customers transacted their winter business on an I.O.U. basis, making up their debts with the proceeds of the following summer. This type of credit was a bit too casual for Union Oil, and so the following year found Obexer in a new partnership this time with Standard Oil of California. It was to be a long and fruitful association for both parties. Though the early 1920s saw more and more autos braving the challenging highways into and around Tahoe, the fastest means of transportation within the basin was still water. Thus Obexer logically chose to deliver his petroleum products by boat. An open launch that he named PICKLE was adequate to care the few barrels necessary to supply his initial sling of customers.