❤️ Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the U.S. with a depth of 1,645 ft..
❤️ Lake Tahoe measures 22 miles (35 km) longest point, by 12 miles (19 km) wide, at its widest point.
❤️ The entire shoreline of the Lake is 72 miles.
❤️ The average elevation at Lake level is 6,225 ft. above sea level.
❤️ Lake Tahoe crosses over the California–Nevada state border—two-thirds in California, and one-third in Nevada.
❤️ The sun shines 274 days at Lake Tahoe—75% of the year.
❤️ There are 63 tributaries draining into Lake Tahoe, and only one outlet at the Truckee River Fanny Bridge dam in Tahoe City.
❤️ If all of the water in Lake Tahoe was poured into an area the size of California, the water would measure approx. 14 inches (36 cm) deep.
❤️ The annual snowfall at Lake level, averages 135 inches, and around 600 inches up at alpine skiing elevations.
❤️ About 330 million gallons of water evaporate from Lake Tahoe every day—an amount that could supply a city the size of Los Angeles for 5 years.
❤️ Lake Tahoe’s 39 trillion gallons of water is enough to supply each person in the U.S. with 50 gallons of water daily for 5 years.
❤️ Lake Tahoe’s water temperature at the surface varies from 40 ̊ to 69 ̊ F. At a depth of 700 ft. down, the water stays a cold, constant 39 ̊ F “frigid.”
❤️ Lake Tahoe was originally named “Da ow a ga,” meaning “edge of the lake” by the Washoe tribe of Native Americans. Pioneers who arrived later mispronounced the name as “Da ow,” which eventually evolved into Tahoe. Lake Tahoe has been called other names throughout history, including Lake Bigler after the California governor’s name, Bonpland after a French botanist, and simply Mountain Lake. In 1945, “Lake Tahoe” became its official name.
❤️ Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) came west to avoid the Civil War and wrote about his journey in, Roughing It. Twain first camped at Lake Tahoe in 1861, and worked a timber claim near Sandy Beach. Tahoe found its way into two of his books and several newspapers articles written between 1863 and 1872. He also became a fixture in Virginia City and Carson City. His writings paved the way for visitor interest and a robust tourism industry to follow.
❤️ Lake Tahoe’s vast timber forests drew large numbers of pioneers to the Basin, from 1858 until 1890. Extensive logging removed nearly all of the area’s forest, which was used to support the underground workings of the Comstock mines in Virginia City to the east. To this day, much of the area is still recovering from that massive deforestation.
❤️ On April 1, 1880, a spring storm dumped 4 feet of snow within 24 hours on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada at Donner Summit. A massive snow slide near Emigrant Gap buried the Central Pacific Railroad tracks under 75 feet of snow, ice, and rock. Snow storms continued for the rest of the month, totaling 298 inches—the most April snow anywhere in U.S. History.
