Evacuated areas included the ski-resort town of Wrightwood, where some 4,500 people live.
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A heat wave and gusty winds also put Southern California on high fire alert.
Lower Lake is home to about 1,300 mostly working class people and retirees who are drawn by its rustic charm and housing prices that are lower than the San Francisco Bay Area.
Damin Anthony Pashilk of Clearlake, California was arrested Monday on 17 counts of arson and is in jail.
Pashilk, 40, is suspected of sparking the blaze that exploded over the weekend in Lower Lake.
The Clayton Fire in Lake County, which police suspect that Pashlik started, began Saturday and has so far burned more than 4,000 acres. Cal Fire said more homes were threatened in Lower Lake and nearby Clearlake, and St. Helena Hospital was evacuated. Some structures had already burned but it wasn’t yet clear whether they were homes.
The 14-square-mile fire near Cajon (kuh-HOHN’) Pass has seen massive growth in the eight hours since it broke out on Tuesday morning.
“It went from one side of town to another”, he said.
It also burned what appear to be several ranch outbuildings and forced evacuations in and around Lytle Creek.
Kristin J. Bender contributed from San Francisco and Haven Daley from Lower Lake. It has burned almost 7 square miles while destroying 175 structures.
He was paroled in July 2007.
In a website posting, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office initially said he was arrested on a felony count of starting a fire after having an arson conviction within the past 10 years, but later said that was an error made when booking Pashilk and he had no known prior arson conviction.
“Mr. Pashilk committed a horrific crime and we will seek prosecution to the fullest extent of the law”, said Chief Ken Pimlott of Cal Fire.
Blue Mountain Farms, a horse ranch in Phelan, was in the path of the fire – just as it was for another fire in the area a year ago.
Snaking walls of flame rising 50 to 100 feet high turned almost two dozen square miles of chaparral to ashes, along with outbuildings and homes in the ranchlands 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
The fire briefly stopped a freight train on nearby tracks.
The fire erupted Tuesday and quickly grew to 1,500 acres.
A news helicopter shows a building burning in the dry canyon area 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
“What I’d do to him, you don’t want to know”, said Butch Cancilla, who saw his neighbor’s home catch fire as he fled on Sunday.
In central California, a wildfire near Lake Nacimiento, about 180 miles northwest of Los Angeles, grew to more than 8 square miles.
Last summer, three major blazes came within a few miles to the east and south of town.
At least a dozen buildings had burned, including the Summit Inn, an historic diner near Interstate 15, he said. As of Monday afternoon, it was only 5 percent contained.
The fire in Lower Lake reduced businesses to little more than charred foundations that were still smoldering on Monday.
The cause remains under investigation. It was 60 percent contained but still threatened more than 400 structures.
The Big Sur blaze is one of six large wildfires in the state.
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Fire crews gained some significant ground on a massive Northern California wildfire that has destroyed 175 homes, businesses and other structures and charred almost 7 square miles.
