Then and now: KTHO radio’s 50-year progression
Local radio station KTHO-AM 590 began broadcasting 50 years ago today — St. Patrick’s Day in 1963.
The original studio, transmitter and announcers were in this two-room cabin in a meadow at the end of Karok Street in the remote Spring Creek summer home tract off Highway 89 between Fallen Leaf Lake and Emerald Bay. There were two 305-foot tall orange-and-white radio towers erected at the site, one of which is visible at the left in this photo.
After inaccessible winters there, KTHO relocated the studio and 
disc jockeys to the lobby of the Tahoe Marina Inn in 1965, and moved the transmitting towers to Pioneer Trail in 1967. KTHO now has its studios and offices in the Heavenly Village at Stateline.
The second photo, 40 years later (and showing the same overhead power lines), reveals how fully that meadow has been restored.The Spring Creek Tract now is closed to winter road access by a U.S. Forest Service gate.
— Bill Kingman
Wow, what memories that lead photo resurrected. I began working as KTHO soon after, summer and through winter.
Memories include the long sagging row of ceiling tiles, slowly expanding. Then one day while on air duty they collapsed into the right-hand turntable.
The first major snowstorm closed the highways. Another announcer had driven to his coastal home on his day off, and couldn’t get through on return. I broadcast the entire day to sign off, and then had to sign on the next morning until he arrived.
As chief engineer I daily read the “base ammeters,” while an LP record “tracked through.” Winter on showshoes took longer. Once on the way back I fell in deep snow, and began to panic. Nothing to hold onto! Finally I struggled to my feet and returned to the building. The LP had run out.
Heavy winter snows preceeded a warm period with heavy rains which flooded the road. After about three days off the air the station manager outfitted two of us with waders. My colleague knew a back way to walk in, bypassing the flooded bridge, and I found the studio and transmitter intact and operable. On the way back a family was being evacuated, and we helped carry the children on our backs through the two-foot deep rushing water atop the bridge to a waiting vehicle on the other side. It was Christmas Eve, and I went back to their pickup to rescue a three foot decorated Christmas tree. I never forgot that experience.
But the finest memory is meeting (a few months after starting at KTHO) Bill Kingman, then announcer and chief engineer of the rival station. Making this is the 49½ anniversary of my longest and best friendship.
My sincere thanks to my 50-year’s friend and mentor Ron Pesha, now a retired broadcasting professor (Adirondack Community College, Glens Falls, NY); today heavily involved in the community activities of the eastern-most point of the USA, the town of Lubec, Maine.