When Leland Stanford hoisted a silver-plated hammer above his head in a remote patch of uninhabited Utah, the world awaited his strike. The American West was only recently connected to the rest of the nation by telegraphic wires, and ceremony organizers had contrived to put one...
Golden eras in sports are fleeting. They emerge when a combination of unlikely factors align—health, talent and the mysterious chemistry of team sports. And they fall apart just as fast. That mysterious alchemy unique to athletics came together in Tahoe City in the late 1970s, when...
For 75 years, Paradise Flat on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe was a summer home for descendants of spice magnate August Schilling, financier J.P. Morgan and the Pennoyers, who were successful dry goods merchants from Oakland. But on rare occasions, the family would visit when...
Perhaps more than anyone, Kit Carson witnessed the dawn of the American West. The unassuming man of small stature was not only at hand for the most seminal moments in the early days of the West, he played a pivotal role in its assimilation into the...
On Valhalla Drive in Martis Camp—the lodestone of modern mountain architecture in the Truckee-Tahoe region—one can easily spot a little spur just off the road called Wyntoon Court. For the uninitiated, it may seem strange that a truncated dead-end road boasting just a handful of the...
In the 1970s and ’80s, many of Tahoe’s top athletes, including some of the world’s fastest speed skiers and most influential rock climbers, lived in a harmonious community on the banks of the Truckee River. Their waterfront dwellings were modest. But given the location, surrounded...
An hour’s drive north of Truckee and a 6-mile detour off Highway 89, Johnsville, California, is a place you’d never pass through unless you were intentional about it. The old mining town, population 21, is now part of a state park. There are second homes...
In Truckee, there’s no escaping the legacy of the infamous Donner Party, the group of 80-plus emigrants stranded while trying to cross the Sierra Nevada in the crushing winter of 1846-47. Even after more than 170 years, the Donner Party’s suffering continues to fascinate, namely...
In November 1870, bandits pulled off the first train robbery in the American West Frank Mitchell, a seasoned Wells Fargo guard, was hunkered down with his partner in the express car of the Overland Express heading east from San Francisco when he heard a knock on...
Placer miners continue to pan Sierra streams, gripped by the same gold fever that shaped California James Dee and Keith Mullenix are sitting on the steep bank of the North Fork American River at Mineral Bar, just outside of Colfax. It’s late afternoon, and though James...