Saving Lake Tahoe: An Environmental History of a National Treasure

Images

Glenbrook Bay, the hub of logging operations for the Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company on Lake Tahoe’s East Shore in 1876. Note the sawmills operating on the shore. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) A similar view of Glenbrook some years later. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) A nineteenth-century steamer pulling a boom of logs to the shoreline sawmills. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) After Americans appropriated the land, in order to continue a semblance of their traditional way of life at Lake Tahoe, Washoe Indians had to adapt. Washoe Billy Merrill, in the middle, acted as a fishing guide in the early twentieth century. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) A log chute on the Truckee River in 1886. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) Throughout the twentieth century, businesses and government entities fought over the dam at Lake Tahoe’s only outlet at the Truckee River. (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) The Tallac Marsh, the natural filter for the lake’s largest tributary, the Upper Truckee River, before it was dredged to create fingers of land for the large Tahoe Keys subdivision . (Courtesy Special Collections, University of Nevada, Reno, Library) Incline Creek, one of two important Incline Village tributaries, carrying silt into the lake when the area was being developed in the late 1960s. (Courtesy Special Collections , University of Nevada, Reno, Library) Road construction above Ward Creek in 1967. The silt from the project would be carried in the stream at the bottom left of the photo to the lake. (Courtesy Special Collections , University of Nevada, Reno, Library) In 1969 Bob Richards uses a nine-meter Van Dorn water sampler to collect lake water. When a “cast” is made to the correct depth, the sampler’s rubber end covers snap closed, collecting the water to be studied. (Courtesy Bob Richards) A February 19, 1971, newspaper photo of Robert Twiss explaining the use of map overlays to develop Tahoe’s land-capability system. (Courtesy Tahoe Daily Tribune) A gully at Heavenly Valley Ski Resort, circa the 1970s, caused by erosion after the removal of vegetation. (Courtesy Bill Johnson) The results of a Forest Service revegetation project at Heavenly Valley. (Courtesy Bill Johnson) Top: Cement foundations built at the Jennings casino site when it was acquired by the US Forest Service. A stream that had meandered through the property had been rerouted to run down the street to the lake. (Courtesy Bill Johnson) Bottom: A work crew planting vegetation on the former casino site. (Courtesy Bill Johnson) The casino site after Forest Service restoration. (Courtesy Bill Johnson) The new research vessel, the John LeConte, alongside the about-to-be-retired San Giuseppe in 1976. Note the improvement in deck gear from old to new. (Courtesy Bob Richards) Two key players in battles over trpa in the 1970s and 1980s: California state senator John Garamendi and the League to Save Lake Tahoe’s Jim Bruner. (Courtesy League to Save Lake Tahoe) ctc executive director Dennis Machida and League to Save Lake Tahoe executive director Rochelle Nason conferring at a panel discussion regarding environmental restoration at the lake. (Courtesy League to Save Lake Tahoe) US Forest Service hydrologist Bill Johnson, in the parka standing to the right, explaining the installation of a fish ladder in Blackwood Canyon to government agency representatives . (Courtesy Bill Johnson) Oily sludge coming from a drainage pipe that runs from the highway to the lake in the middle of South Lake Tahoe. (Courtesy League to Save Lake Tahoe) A Russian researcher joins Professor Charles Goldman, in the middle, and Bob Richards, in the foreground, to do light readings on the lake in 1993. (Courtesy Bob Richards) Senator Harry Reid (right), one of the organizers of the original Lake Tahoe Presidential Summit, with “the father of Lake Tahoe ecology,” Dr. Charles Goldman, at one of the annual Tahoe gatherings. (Courtesy League to Save Lake Tahoe) ...