The Lake of the Sky eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 436 pages of information about The Lake of the Sky.

The Lake of the Sky eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 436 pages of information about The Lake of the Sky.

As soon as the logging industry declined Tahoe City began to go down, and only the fishing and tourist interests kept it alive.

When the railway was moved over from Glenbrook and the shops and yard of the Transportation Company were established here it regained some of its former activity and life, and is now the chief business center on the Lake.  It is the headquarters of the campers who come for pleasure each year, and its store does a very large and thriving business.  New cottages are being erected and it is destined ere long to be a stirring pleasure resort town, for, as the delights of Tahoe become more widely known, every available piece of land will increase in value and where there is now one summer home there will be a hundred.

Glenbrook.  On the Nevada side of the Lake, Glenbrook used to be one of the most active, busy, bustling towns in the west.  It scarcely seems credible to one who visits the quiet, placid resort of to-day that when I first saw it, some thirty years ago, it had three or four large sawmills in constant operation, day and night.  It was then regarded, and so designated in the History of Nevada, published in 1881, as “the great lumber manufacturing town of the state.”

The town was begun in 1860, the land being squatted upon by G.W.  Warren, N.E.  Murdock, and R. Walton.  In 1861 Captain A.W.  Pray erected a saw-mill, run by water-power, but as water sometimes failed, when the demand for lumber increased, he changed to steam-power.  He also secured a thousand acres, much of it the finest timber land, from the government, using in its purchase Sioux Scrip.

Up to 1862 the only way to travel from California to Carson and Virginia City, south of Lake Tahoe, was by the Placerville road which came by Bijou and Lakeside and then over the Kingsbury Grade, via Friday’s Station, afterward called Small’s, by which latter name it is still known on the maps of the U.S.  Geological Survey.  In 1862, however, a new road was projected, branching off to the northwest (the left) from Small’s, and following the eastern shore of the Lake, passed Zephyr Cove and Cave Rock to Glenbrook, thence by Spooner’s and down King’s Canyon to Carson.  This was called the Lake Bigler Toll Road (notice the fact that “Tahoe” was then officially designated in Nevada as “Bigler"), and was completed in 1863.

This demanded the opening of a better class of hotel for travelers and others in Glenbrook, and in the same year the road was finished Messrs. Winters and Colbath erected the “Glenbrook Hotel,” which finally came into the hands of Messrs. Yerington and Bliss, who, later, were the builders of the railway, the owners of most of the surrounding timberlands, and who had practical control of the major portion of the lumber interests.  But prior to this a lumber-mill was built by J.H.F.  Goff and George Morrill in the northern part of the town.  This did a good business, for even in those early days common lumber

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The Lake of the Sky from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.