Where(How?) Exactly did the Caro-Kann Get its Reputation for Solidity?

Bad joke Joker... It's used by players like Karpov (former world champion) as a good drawing weapon. What's more solid then Caro kann?

Nothing  Haha bumping old threads don't hate me please thank you

I played a player once OTB who told me they play the Najdorf to draw, and the Caro to win.

Najdrof to draw because idiots play 30 moves of theory then shake hands.

Caro to win I don't understand as well  but I suppose trying to outplay your opponent in the endgame.

My favorite Caro-Kann was when I showed up twenty minutes late after a wine tasting at lunch. The game was over in about ten minutes.

Yeah, I remember you showing that boden's mate game. Nice one.

I think the caro is solid because since black gives away very little info about his development, white can't really start something besides a small lead in development. 

Also, the pawn structure or the caro seriously hinders any attack, since pawn breaks don't help white.

Yeah, I agree. I started playing it early in my (serious) chess development. I often went back and forth between playing it and playing something a little more active, but in my serious 2 hour games, it led to good endgames, like this one:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/endgames-are-fun

When I eventually get back to chess (which I am not at the moment), it's unclear whether or not I will keep playing this or go for something more dynamic, but Caro-Kann has served me well so far

Certainly, anyone believing the Advance variation is strong would also believe that the Caro-Kann is solid.

Ugh solid is such a vague adjective in chess. The caro is okay.. You will have to be prepared to play some cramped positions and deal with some nasty kingside attacks in a lot of variations. It's not really seen all that often at the highest level. Exchange variation I like for black okay.

in the caro kahn, black keeps his pawn structure very healthy and noncommittal. Black also gets to put his pieces all in easy good squares (only variations where this is tricky are in some advanced caro kahn lines, but even then, you face far worse congestion in other closed defenses like the french and d5 nimzowitsch anyways). 

Caro has a deadly psychological element to it, which is that white is strongly pressured to keep his first move advantage, but to do so, he must take risks or it will dissipate in the endgame, especially with capitalizing on his small space advantage and this lends itself to good positional countering by black's flexible but sturdy pawn structure.

Back in, I think, the late 60s, there was a regular chess program on BBC TV and Jonathan Speelman was a practitioner of the C-K. I remember him talking the viewers through a loss that he'd suffered when his C-K was smashed up I think in the main line with 3. Nd2. He referred to it as his "poor Caro-Kann" in a way that made one realise that he was quite used to it being battered and bruised. It's a real fighting defence when white chooses to be ultra-aggressive. I learned a five pawn sacrifice by white and played it an a match once, and won with it. It had been worked out by a Bolton player who was about 2190 FIDE. I remember he was in the range 2180 to 2195 for about ten consecutive years, despite playing hundreds of games. We used to play blitz and he sometimes got me to help him analyse his pet creation.