Lake Tahoe: A Brief History of the Lake

!±8± Lake Tahoe: A Brief History of the Lake

The beauty of Lake Tahoe will take your breath away. It is a fantastic place to visit, with resorts and developments that will please everyone.

The lake itself was formed by the rise and fall of faults about 5 to 10 million years ago. This created a deep valley that was blocked on the north-eastern side by lava from an eruption of Mt. Pluto approximately 2 million years ago. According to geologists, the initial height of Lake Tahoe was 600 feet higher than its present level.

Today the lake itself stretches across the Nevada-California border, 59 miles southwest of Reno and 100 miles northeast of Sacramento. Lake Tahoe has a surface area of approximately 192 square miles and contains about 39 trillion gallons of water with a circumference of 72 miles.

It is the largest alpine lake, measuring 22 miles long and 12 miles wide. It is the third deepest lake in North America and the tenth deepest in the world with an average depth of 989 feet and 1,645 feet at its lowest point.

Lake Tahoe is one of the few major bodies of water in North America that does not eventually empty out into the ocean. The lake is fed by 63 streams but only the Truckee River flows out. The surface of the lake is 6,227 feet above sea level. The surface of the lake can drop below the outlet to the Truckee during times of drought, making the lake totally self-contained at these times.

The top 12 feet of the lake can warm to as much as 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer but in the winter and in the lower depths, the lake remains at a chilly and life-threatening 39 degrees F. However, due to the constant turnover of water from the bottom to the surface, the lake as a whole has never been known to have frozen over.

This spectacular body of water has held many names over the years. It was first "discovered" by explorer John C. Fremont, accompanied by famed guide Kit Carson, on February 14, 1844. Fremont named it Lake Bonpland after a French botanist who had joined him on earlier expeditions. However, mapmaker Charles Preuss recorded it as Mountain Lake. Despite all this it was commonly called Fremont Lake until 1852 when California Governor John Bigler led a party to the area to rescue some snowbound travelers. It was then renamed Bigler Lake.

The lake went by other names such as Truckee Lake and Maheon Lake until the outbreak of the Civil War when politically correct members of the Union attempted to strike Bigler's name from the lake due to his supposed Confederate sympathies. It was then that the name "Tahoe" was proposed, supposedly because it meant "high water". Although there seems to be little historical support for this meaning of the word "Tahoe" the name stuck. Some suggest that the word is actually a corruption of the Spanish word "tajo", pronounced "ta-ho" and meaning a "cut".

Today, the Tahoe basin offers an absolutely incredible range of outdoor activities to choose from. Downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, ice skating, sleigh rides, sledding, dogsled rides, snowmobiling, horseback riding, waterskiing, lake swimming, hiking, camping, golfing and boating, just to name a few.