In 1868 the tracks of the Central Pacific Railroad reached Truckee. From there a narrow gauge railroad, built from the remnants of the lumber railroads that had proliferated in the Tahoe Basin during the lumbering years, connected it to Tahoe…
Category: Lake Tahoe History
Lake Tahoe – “The Lake of the Sky,” Part V – Railroads in the Basin
Always looking for better and faster ways to move the logs and lumber from the Tahoe Basin to Virginia City, the owners of the mills started building railroads – all kinds of railroads! It appeared to some that an immense…
Lake Tahoe – “The Lake of the Sky,” Part IV – Down Come the Trees
Within just a short period after the 1859 discovery of silver in the Virginia Mountains of Nevada, there were over one-hundred way stations along the road between Placerville and Virginia City. Freight wagons by the hundreds were lined up end…
Lake Tahoe – “The Lake of the Sky, “Part III – The People Come
Prior to 1859, when the news of the discovery of silver in the Virginia Mountains of what was then known as Washoe, and later Nevada, leaked out, very few people resided in the Lake Tahoe Basin and fewer had yet…