The twentieth century made Tahoe a playground. Steamers gave way to highways, lodges to ski resorts, and in 1960 the Winter Olympics came to nearby Olympic Valley — today Palisades Tahoe — launching the modern ski era that fills the basin every winter. Summer brought boating, hiking, and the beaches; winter brought the snow that lingers on the peaks into May. Through all of it, the clarity of the water became the thing worth protecting: the "Keep Tahoe Blue" conservation movement grew up to defend exactly the cobalt depth that made the lake famous. Big Blue is still, first and last, the lake itself.
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.
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.
