| Automobiling along the Truckee River
Click photo to see full-sized. |
| Automobiling along the Picturesque Truckee
River, on the way to Lake Tahoe Click photo to see full-sized. |
It may be interesting to recall that in 1900 Mr. A.W. Von Schmidt, President of the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works, offered to sell to the City of San Francisco certain rights to the water of Lake Tahoe, the dam at the outlet, contract for a deed to two and a half acres of land on which the outlet dam was constructed, a diverting dam in the Truckee River, a patent to the land (forty acres) on which this land stood, and the maps and surveys for a complete line conveying the water of Lake Tahoe to the city of the Golden Gate. He offered to construct this line, including a tunnel through the Sierra Nevadas, and deliver thirty million gallons of water daily, for $17,960,000. If a double line, or a hundred millions of gallons daily, were required, the price was to be correspondingly increased.
This proposition aroused the people of Nevada, and R.L. Fulton, of Reno, Manager of the State Board of Trade, wrote to the San Francisco supervisors, calling attention to the facts that there was no surplus water from Tahoe during the irrigation season, for the water had been diverted by the farmers living along the Truckee River to their fields; that flouring-mills, smelting and reduction works, electric light plant and water-works at Reno, immense saw-mills, a furniture factory, box factory, water and electric-light works, railroad water-tanks, etc., at Truckee, half a dozen ice-ponds, producing over 200,000 tons of ice annually, sawmills and marble-working mills at Essex; planing-mills at Verdi, paper-mill at Floristan, and other similar plants, were totally dependent for their water supply upon the Truckee River.
He also claimed (what was the well-known fact) that the Von Schmidt dam was burned out many years ago, and that Nevada would put up a tremendously stiff fight to prevent any such diversion of Tahoe water as was contemplated. Needless to say the plan fell through.
CHAPTER XII
BY RAIL TO LAKE TAHOE
Lake Tahoe is fifteen miles from Truckee, which is one of the mountain stations on the main line of the Southern Pacific Railway (Central Route), two hundred and eight miles from San Francisco, thirty-five miles from Reno, Nevada, and five hundred and seventy-four miles from Ogden, Utah. By the San Joaquin Valley route via Sacramento, the distance to Los Angeles is five hundred and eighty miles, or by San Francisco and the Coast Line six hundred and ninety-two miles.
| Truckee, Calif., Where Travelers Take Trains for Lake Tahoe Click photo to see full-sized. |
During the summer season trains run frequently through, making Tahoe easily accessible.