Lake Tahoe lies 6,225 ft above sea level in the Sierra Nevada range, straddling the state line between California and Nevada. The border gives this popular resort region a split personality. About half the visitors here arrive intent on low-key sightseeing, hiking, fishing, camping, and boating. The rest head directly for the Nevada side, where bargain dining, big-name entertainment, and the lure of a jackpot draw them into the glittering casinos.
Swimming in Lake Tahoe is always brisk, and the lake's beaches are generally crowded in summer. Those who prefer solitude can escape to the many parks and protected tracts of wilderness that ring the 22-mile-long, 12-mile-wide lake. From mid-autumn to late spring, winter-sports enthusiasts are attracted to Tahoe's downhill resorts and cross-country centers. Ski resorts try to open by Thanksgiving, if only with machine-made snow, and can operate through May or later.
The first white explorer to gaze upon this spectacular region was Captain John C. Fremont in 1844, guided by famous scout Kit Carson. Not long afterward, silver was discovered in Nevada's Comstock Lode at Virginia City. As the mines grew larger and deeper, the Tahoe Basin's forests were leveled to provide lumber for subterranean support. By the early 1900s wealthy Californians were building lakeside estates here, some of which still stand. Improved roads brought the less affluent in the 1920s and 1930s, when modest bungalows began to appear. The first casinos opened in the 1940s. Ski resorts inspired another development boom in the 1950s and 1960s and turned the lake into a year-round destination.
During some summer weekends it seems that absolutely every tourist -- 100,000 at peak periods -- is in a car on the main road that circles the 72-mile shoreline. And the crowds increase as the day wears on. But at a vantage point overlooking Emerald Bay early in the morning, on a trail in the national forests that ring the basin, or on a sunset cruise on the lake itself, you can forget the hordes and commercial development and absorb the grandeur of the area.
