First Stop: Lake Tahoe

Posted on August 22, 2007

To the uninitiated, Lake Tahoe might as well be Lake Winapantonka. Or Lake Kitchamabitcha. Or the Goodship Lollypop. Who cares about its ethereal beauty? That its still waters served as a spiritual sanctuary for not one—but three Indian nations. How its sapphire splendor earned it the nom de guerre, “Lake of the Sky.”

Never mind that it’s the second largest alpine lake on earth. Only Peru’s Lake Titicaca is situated at a higher elevation and bigger. Or that it’s the third deepest lake in North America, and the eighth deepest in the world. Who gives a fig that Mark Twain, upon seeing its brilliance for the first time described it as: “A noble sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the level of the seas, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that towered aloft a full three thousand feet higher still!” Twain, who loved traveling almost as much as he loved cheap tobacco, later wrote of his first glimpse of Eden, “As it lay there with the shadows of mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface, I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole world affords.”

Mountains? Snowcaps? Mile high waters? Pfft. Nature is so Discovery Channel. Unless you live in California or Nevada (the two states that Lake Tahoe bisects) you probably know almost nothing about it. For many, the question is neatly summed up by taking bonehead to the second power: Lake + Truck Name = Middle of Nowhere.

But-oh-how-wrong-they-are. Did you know, for example, that the opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather II” takes place on Lake Tahoe’s west shore? Or that Frank Sinatra opened a swinging resort casino—not in Vegas—but on the lake’s north end? Or that Squaw Valley, one of the Tahoe’s 15 premiere ski resorts, hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics? Who was its Director of Pageantry? Walt Disney. Or that Marilyn Monroe kept a cabin in the northeast woods? (President Kennedy was rumored to visit.) Or that the famous Ponderosa, home of Ben Cartwright on the long-running TV western “Bonanza,” was rooted on the lake’s Nevada coast? Beaches in Nevada? Did you know about those?

So c’mon, wise guy: If Lake Tahoe was good enough for Twain, the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Mickey Mouse and Freto Corleone, whaddya gonna say about it? That it’s nothing but flannel on lumberjacks? That wouldn’t be a smart move. I got a hundred button men on the street. You don’t want to get me… Upset.

Adventure, Tragedy and Surprises

The truth is that the greater Lake Tahoe area (which includes the historic high desert towns of Virginia City, Reno, and Carson City) is one of America’s most interesting—and least known—national treasures. For nine thousand years, according to native legend, the Washoe Indians lived in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the summer, where they hunted, fished and gathered medicinal plants and roots, before moving to Nevada’s high desert each winter. Though the Washoe were an aboriginal people—nomads circling the Sierras—the lake was the cornerstone of their spiritual identity. Many of the Washoe’s holiest ceremonies were held along its pristine shores.

John C. Fremont and Kit Carson were the first palefaces to come upon “the postcard” when their expedition wound through the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1844. Originally christened Lake Bonplad, and then Lake Bigler, the lake was renamed Lake Tahoe in 1862. The name was purportedly inspired by a Washoe Indian word, though even today there’s little agreement about its true meaning. Some say it means “big water” while others say “strong water” while the intoxicated historians insist it means “whiskey.” Twain, never a fan of Tahoe’s rebranding, said it translated to “Grasshopper Soup.”

The former Sam Clemens’ curmudgeonly observations aside, days were good in the land of the grasshoppers. Springs and summers were comfortable, although travelers soon discovered the violent force of the mountain winters. The Donner Party, stranded on a windblown pass during the blizzards of 1846 resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. But ensuing settlers were not deterred. Infected with “westering fever” (more of a psychological disorder than a physical ailment) thousands continued westward undaunted. These sick brave souls soothed their respective walkabout joneses by coaxing covered wagons along perilous mountain roads. Communities of survivors eventually flourished, buttressed by a Pony Express outpost and Wells Fargo stagecoaches en route to San Francisco. The mountains, long geographically treacherous, now provided cover for a different kind of treachery. City bound stages were routinely waylaid by colorful bands of mountain robbers. Most infamous was a British-born highwayman named Charles Bolton, who robbed 28 coaches without a bullet in his gun. Bolton was better known by his pseudonym, Black Bart.

But plundering wasn’t the only way to strike it rich. When settlers struck gold at Sutter’s Mill, gold fever hastened Lake Tahoe’s growth, as the Sierras became the eastern gateway to San Francisco. Gold and silver strikes near the lake, itself, helped the area acquire boomtown status. The discovery of Nevada’s Comstock Lode, valued at more than $500 billion in today’s cold cash, secured fortunes for men like George Hearst (whose son William Randolph Hearst did a thing or two with newspapers) and Leland Stanford, who used some of that nouveau bling to build a university. The Comstock also provided a boon for Nevada’s federal ambitions. In 1864, mired in the longest days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared Nevada statehood, largely so its silver reserves could finance the flailing Union Army.

The Boom Years likewise drew ordinary men like Twain, a restless Mississippi riverboat pilot, who abandoned that job to come west with his brother. He tried mining, but all of the best claims were long gone. Between jobs, approaching thirty, disillusioned, and teetering toward broke, Twain walked into the office of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and asked if he might have a job. Though the twentysomething slacker hadn’t a scratch of writing experience, the paper’s editor took a gamble. Twain’s colorful stories soon made him the toast of the Nevada territory.

Not everyone struck it rich, of course, either literally or literately. But that didn’t keep the lake from drawing its share of dreamers and do’ers. From English-bred madams, to prospectors with a few molly screws loose, to gamblers eager to try their hand at Virginia City’s famed Suicide Table (where a number of men shot themselves after their luck ran out.) Before there was the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, there was the Bonanza. Boomtowns always drew colorful citizens, and Tahoe’s mountain towns became some of the most character-rich in the old west. Occasionally settlers even changed history in ways not even they could have imagined. In 1871, a Reno tailor named Jacob Davis began using copper rivets to reinforce pants. Davis used a canvas fabric for durability in the hard-bitten camps, and believed rivets would make his pants even more durable. Eager to protect his idea, the immigrant tailor wrote his fabric merchant in San Francisco, a smalltime supplier named Levi Strauss, and asked if Strauss would help him secure the necessary patents. The rest, as they say, is blue jeans history.

Modern Times

The lake, sadly, couldn’t sustain on pant profits alone. After the gold and silver strikes, settlers did what they could to muddle through, surviving thanks to logging, ice production, and construction of the transcontinental railroad. Chinese laborers did much of the work, and for a time, the Sierras had one of the largest Asian populations in the United States. Yet racism was rampant, and the railroad’s completion led to a mass exodus in the years that followed. This wasn’t the only time the area would find itself in the grip of civil strife. On July 4, 1910, the heavyweight championship of the world came to Reno, pitting Jack Johnson against the champ, Jim Jeffries. Johnson, nicknamed the Galveston Giant, was every bit as big as his name. He was also black, and scarcely fifty years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, Johnson became the first black man given a shot at the title. Johnson had waited ten years for the chance. Jeffries came out of retirement for the sole purpose of proving, “that a white man is better than a Negro.” The Giant won in 15 rounds. His victory set off race riots across the country.

There would be more challenges. By the early 20th century, San Francisco society was discovering the lake’s ancient charms. This brought about a slow but increasingly necessary transition to a tourist and recreation center. The introduction of skiing, imported from Norway, led to the paving of mountain roads and the building of lodge resorts. In Nevada, the death of mining, and then railroads, led to the legalization of casino gambling in 1931. Reno soon became the gambling capital of the country. The occasional mob hit followed—but the vacuous deserts between Reno and Salt Lake City (home to Burning Man and little else) proved as good for burying bodies as Las Vegas. The little city to the south had yet to reach its heyday when Frank Sinatra bought a casino in Lake Tahoe in 1960. Sinatra’s CalNeva was situated on the stateline. Literally. Non-gambling operations were located in the Golden State—while the Silver State housed the blackjack tables. Sinatra’s resort drew the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and others. As for Marilyn, according to local lore, Sinatra had her cabin built so the bombshell would visit. Also occasionally landing (on the landing pad that Sinatra placed on the casino’s roof) was JFK. Whether Lake Tahoe offered a picturesque backdrop for the President and Norma Jean we’ll never know. Even so, the lake today is home to six, 24 hour casinos on Nevada’s shore.

Ironically, it wasn’t blue jeans, or Jack Johnson, or Frank, but the 1960 Winter Olympics that put Tahoe on the international map. Held at Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe became the second American site of a winter games. (Lake Placid, New York, was the first.) This meant in the esteem of international tobogganers, Lake Tahoe now stood alongside Innsbruck, Oslo and St. Moritz as one of the world’s premiere winter destinations. Double ironically, in the years that followed, other mountain towns would first emulate, and then supplant Lake Tahoe’s wonderland status. Former hick towns like Aspen and Park City have stripped cachet in recent years from the Sierra Nevadas. (Excellent skiing and lavish film festivals have that effect from time to time.) Even so, Lake Tahoe hasn’t fallen on hard days. A plethora of national parks and shockingly bi-partisan preservation efforts have kept the scenery its usual breathtaking. With more than 270 sunny days each year, and alpine snow levels between 25 and 40 feet, the area fills with thousands of hikers, fishers, boaters and bikers during the summer—while skiers and snowboarders tear it up en masse each winter. Today, the community embraces its colorful past while maintaining a relaxed present filled with mile-high sun, surf and close to 9,000 total ski acres.

Twain once wrote that during his first night camping at the lake, he accidentally set part of the forest on fire. Twain might have been the first to set the town ablaze, but as today’s locals will tell you, he’s far from the last.

Photos: Landscape: Lake Tahoe’s west shore—as seen from Tahoe City, California – Bonanza: Bonanza Saloon and Gaming, Virginia City, Nevada – Mark Twain: 1890 Portrait – Bear in Repose: Tippy Canoe home decor, Truckee, California

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