Then and now: Train travel into the basin
Trains used to come from Truckee to Tahoe City. Photo/Lake Tahoe Master Framing
The old railroad line is now a bike path. Photo/Google Earth
The black and white photo is hand-captioned “Engine #2 Along the Truckee River 1911.” Southern Pacific replaced the original narrow-gauge rails with standard gauge in 1926.
Those rails were removed permanently in 1942 for scrap iron needed during World War II.
The color photo shows today’s bicycle path on that historic rail bed, running along Highway 89 near Tahoe City.
The two (blurry) sepia tone images are single movie frames from a 16mm travelogue filmed in 1930 (Lake Tahoe Historical Society Museum). The train would loop near Tahoe Tavern, meet the steamers Tahoe and Nevada on a pier at Tahoe City, and then make the 1-hour, 15-minute return trip to Truckee.
— Bill Kingman
Weren’t those narrow gauge tracks the ones recycled from the Meyers to Bijou line that moved logs, run in the late 1800’s here on the South Shore?
Love this Bill, I have my great aunts photos from the 20’s with a couple of what must be this train rolling thru huge snow drifts, I wasn’t sure where it was until your post.
Wonder if I should take to Lake Tahoe Historical Society? Thanks again!
Bill, again so interesting. Thank you. We live in Bijou Pines (where tracks ran as Toogee mentioned). When my husband was doing some yard work, he discovered a railroad spike, an obvious remnant of a bygone era in Tahoe history.
Yes, Cher, your photos should go to the Lake Tahoe Historical Society. It is the perfect place to keep our incredible history alive for future generations. Well, there and where ever Bill is stashing all his “then” photos.
A Lot of photos can be scanned.
There are old logging railroad beds around Sage Hen campground north of Truckee that should make for great trails.
The Tahoe Events Center in Kings Beach is looking for Historical photos for a history exhibit. Please contact Kathy Giebel at the Center 530 546-7249 with any photos, insights or leads on Tahoe history you have. It would be so wonderful to publicly share this past, esp as we seek to design a land to water transit system for the future.
Toogee, Ive seen those tracks on the 1893 USGS Markleeville map, they ran from Meyers to the Bijou pier for logging purposes. You can see evidence of the old narrow gauge in the LTCC parking lot(25′ wide cut out in the tree’s starting at the end of Meadow Crest and ending at Al Tahoe/Johnson).
Thks
I will contact both ends of the lake:)
Looking at her book again and there’s sepia prints of the Meteor, Nevada, and Tahoe.. She and
my uncle traveled to Tahoe frm Oakland whenever they could getaway, I’ve been told. There’s pix of ladies camping w ankle length dresses, stirring a cast iron pot :)