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The California/Nevada boundary runs some 330 kilometers due south from Oregon, and then jogs diagonally southeast toward Arizona. That jog is in Lake Tahoe. The western two-thirds of the lake is in California and the rest is in Nevada. It’s an absurd place to put the state line, but it wasn’t intentional. The men who gathered in 1849 to draft a constitution for the new state of California had limited knowledge of geography. Having decided that the state would extend eastward from the Pacific coast to the Sierra Nevada, they chose convenient parallels and meridians near those mountains to define the eastern boundaries. Nobody knew about Lake Tahoe until six years later, when the Legislature sent the first team of surveyors to figure out where the state line actually went.

In another odd split, Lake Tahoe had two names for 92 years. The explorer John C. Fremont first sighted the lake from a nearby mountain in 1844, but he neglected to name it. In 1853 the Surveyor General of California decided to call it Lake Bigler after his boss, John Bigler, then Governor of California. The legislatures in both California and Nevada soon made it official. Because Governor Bigler was a Confederate sympathizer, a federal surveyor loyal to the Union refused to put Bigler’s name on an 1862 map. The map labeled it Lake Tahoe, which was already becoming the popular if unofficial choice. The California Legislature officially changed the name in 1945.

 
The origin of Tahoe is just as confusing. It’s almost certainly from the local Washoe Indians, although some sources cite the Spanish tajo, meaning “cut” or “cleft.” For the local chamber of commerce and merchants, the preferred meaning is “Lake of the Sky.” Could they perhaps be referring to the astronomical price of real estate? But it’s most likely an abbreviated Anglicized version of what the Washoe called their territory: Da-Ow-A-Ga, which means either “Edge of the Lake” or “A Whole Lot of Water.”

However you slice it, Lake Tahoe is a place of superlatives. The product of volcanism and uplifting in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it’s the largest alpine lake in the United States— 35 kilometers long, 19 kilometers wide, at an average elevation of 1,897 meters— and the second deepest (maximum depth 500 meters). That’s “a whole lot of water,” over 147 trillion liters. The shore has some nice sandy beaches, although the lake is too cold for swimming. The lower depths stay a constant 4 degrees Celsius, and the surface might heat up to 20 degrees on a hot summer day. That chilly water is renowned for its purity and clarity, which scientists have measured for over a century by lowering a dinner plate into the lake. You can see a plate 23 meters down in some parts of the lake, but development and hordes of visitors are reducing that visibility at an alarming rate. Bumper stickers proclaiming “Keep Tahoe Blue” are often seen on SUVs in California.

Lake Tahoe looms impressively large when you’re standing on the beach. But you might not get that impression from pictures of it. The iconic location for countless postcards is a little appendage to the lake’s southwest corner called Emerald Bay, which contains Lake Tahoe’s only island. Fannette Island (the last of the half-dozen names it’s had) is a piece of granite that rises 45 meters above the water. It resisted the grinding ice sheet that carved the bay 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Inspiration Point, with its parking lot, toilets, and wheelchair-accessible trails, is the official developed viewpoint overlooking the bay. But tall pine trees interfere with that vista, so you’ll probably be more inspired at any of several small unmarked turnouts just north of the viewpoint on Highway 89.

You won’t get the complete Emerald Bay experience by viewing it from overlooks. You also need to visit it up close by boat. If you didn’t bring your own powerboat, dinghy, or kayak, you can take a rather expensive cruise on one of two Mississippi-style paddlewheel boats, the Tahoe Queen or the MS Dixie II. Coupons in any of Lake Tahoe’s numerous tourist publications will knock a few dollars off the fare. From a boat you can easily see how Emerald Bay got its name.

A location within three hours’ drive of Northern California’s major metropolitan areas ensures that visitors to Lake Tahoe can enjoy crowds and traffic jams at least nine months of the year. From roughly November through April, Lake Tahoe is overrun with skiers and snowboarders who flock to what is probably the largest concentration of winter sports in North America. There are 15 downhill and 13 cross-country ski areas, including politically-incorrect Squaw Valley, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. During the summer, Lake Tahoe is even more overrun with vacationing families.

Spring and Autumn are Lake Tahoe’s pleasant off-season, when crowds are thinnest and accommodations are most affordable. In autumn, fall colors decorate even the sprawling agglomeration of strip malls, motels, and time-share hucksters known as South Lake Tahoe. But there are disadvantages to the off-season. Three state parks along the south and west shores offer fine views, hiking trails, and public lake access. Emerald Bay and D.L. Bliss State Parks are only open during the summer. Sugar Pine Point is open year-round, but when I was there it might as well have been closed due to construction. Autumn seems to be road construction season in the Sierras. I spent too much of my trip waiting for “pilot cars” to guide my queue of vehicles over single open lanes, as crews worked to repave and improve the roads before the snow and skiers arrive.

Even without the state parks, you can enjoy the views of the lake and surrounding forest on the 116-kilometer drive around the lake. Walking around the shore is more difficult. Much of the west and north shore is private property, including many boat piers with locked gates. But you can find public access to the lake in the little shoreline villages.

 
Most accommodations, restaurants, shops, and tourist services in the Lake Tahoe area are on the south shore in South Lake Tahoe, California and in adjacent Stateline, Nevada. A smaller, somewhat quieter alternative is on the north shore, directly across the lake in Kings Beach and Tahoe Vista.

Driving from Sacramento or San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe, you can enjoy some very nice scenery along U.S. Highway 50 as you approach the lake. An even better scenic drive is a section of California Route 88, the Carson Pass National Scenic Byway. Autumn “leaf-peepers” can find plenty of colorful foliage there. I took that drive in early October, after the season’s first snow added fresh white trim to trees at their peak of fall color. Mountain weather can change quickly, and snow can fall at any time of year. The morning after a day of overcast and snow brought a nearly ideal blue sky with passing puffy clouds.

 
Route 89 leads from South Lake Tahoe to Picketts Junction, where it joins Route 88. Head west from there. Just past Picketts Junction, these cabins added a nice scenic element to the autumn color and winter snow.

The high point (literally and figuratively) of Route 88 is Kit Carson Pass, at an elevation of 2,613 meters. Named for the famed explorer who guided John C. Fremont on the 1844 expedition in which he “discovered” Lake Tahoe, the pass was the main overland route for fortune seekers looking to strike it rich in the 1849 California gold rush. Continuing west, it’s all downhill from there past alpine lakes and meadows. An overlook near Kit Carson Pass provides a view of scenic Red Lake.

Lake Tahoe’s east shore in Nevada has some of the lake’s finest scenery. Rather than exclusive private development as in California, much of the east shore is a state park that’s open year-round.

The fine print: All pictures and text are copyright © 2006 by Ted R. Marcus and may not be reproduced without permission. For information about licensing any of these images for Web, print, stock, or other uses, contact me.