The Steamer Tahoe: Queen of the Lake
Near Tahoe City, California
By the end of the eighteen hundreds, Lake Tahoe had transformed from a logging frontier into a glamorous summer resort, and the grandest way to travel it was by steamship. The queen of the lake was the steamer Tahoe. Ordered by the lumber magnate Duane Leroy Bliss and launched in eighteen ninety-six, she was the largest vessel ever to sail these waters, some one hundred sixty-nine feet long, finished inside with teak, mahogany, leather, brass, and marble.
For roughly forty years the Tahoe carried passengers and mail on a stately circuit of the lakeshore hotels and communities. But the age of the automobile ended her reign. When a paved road was finally completed all the way around the lake in the nineteen thirties, and she lost the mail contract, the great steamer became too costly to run.
In nineteen forty, Bliss's son had her deliberately sunk off Glenbrook, meaning to leave her in shallow water as a memorial, visible to glass bottomed boats. The plan went wrong. The underwater slope was steeper than expected, and the Tahoe slid down into the depths, coming to rest hundreds of feet below.
She lies there still, a sunken monument to the lake's golden age of tourism.
