Then and now: Landscaping improves area

Swiss Village Motel no longer exists. Photos/Bill Kingman

What the area looks like in 2013.

The long-standing Tahoe Bottle Shop remains today, while the Swiss Village Motel, the Fern Road intersection, and Joe Montoya’s Stateline Shell (distant grey building) seen in the 2002 photo have been replaced with today’s landscaping.

In the 1960s, prior to the “LIQUOR” sign, two large poles supported a huge electric Harrah’s marquee straddling over the bottle shop building.

The strategic positioning of that brightly-lighted marquee made it head-on visible to motorists on Highway 50 approaching from as far away as Ski Run Boulevard, listing Harrah’s entertainment attractions in large plastic letters.

A very strong windstorm one afternoon (I think mid-1965) felled the marquee, shattering it on the ground next to the building. It was never replaced, as that was about the time when billboards and off-premise signage became prohibited in the new city of South Lake Tahoe.

That windstorm also destroyed much of the drive-in theater movie screen on Glenwood Way in Bijou.

— Bill Kingman