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The Washoe (Wasiw) gathered at the lake each summer for thousands of years, and Tahoe remains central to their culture today. The first U.S. survey party to record the lake was General John C. Fremont's expedition in 1844, and within two decades the Comstock silver boom in Nevada had stripped much of the basin's timber to shore up the Virginia City mines. It was in those years, the early 1860s, that a young Samuel Clemens — Mark Twain — camped on the shore and later wrote it into Roughing It, calling Lake Tahoe "the fairest picture the whole Earth affords." The grand-estate era followed: by 1929 Lora Knight had built Vikingsholm, a Scandinavian stone castle, at the head of Emerald Bay.
Tahoe's stories run as deep as the lake. They'll tell you that on a still day you can see a dinner plate sixty feet down, and that the water is so cold and deep it barely freezes. They'll tell you the Washoe came here for ten thousand summers before anyone wrote a word about it, and that Mark Twain thought the air alone was worth the trip. And they'll point across the water to Emerald Bay — the castle, the island, the hermit's tomb — as if to say the strangest, finest things at Tahoe all gather in one cove. It is a place of contrasts: sacred and scenic, wild and built, summer-warm and snow-capped at once.
Why People Visit Lake Tahoe California
Lake Tahoe draws people who love mountains and water in the same view. It is Big Blue — the highest, deepest, clearest alpine lake in the West — with a National Natural Landmark bay, a Scandinavian castle, a ten-thousand-year Washoe heritage, and ski slopes and beaches a few hours from the city. Visitors come for the rare combination: cobalt water you can see straight down into, granite peaks above it, and a shore that's beautiful in snow and sun alike.
