The Watson Cabin: Tahoe City's Oldest Home
Near Tahoe City, California
Right in the heart of Tahoe City stands the oldest surviving building in town, a sturdy little two story log cabin known as the Watson Cabin. It is said to have been built in nineteen oh nine by Robert Montgomery Watson, Tahoe City's first constable, as a wedding gift for his son and his new bride. The Watson family had arrived here in eighteen eighty-eight, just as Tahoe City was shifting from a rough logging and steamer town into a summer resort.
The cabin was built from hand hewn logs and local stone, and remarkably for its time and place, it is said to have boasted indoor plumbing, a rare luxury on the lake in those years. Downstairs held a living room, kitchen, and porch, while upstairs were bedrooms, a sewing room, and a bathroom. In later years the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society acquired the building to preserve it, and today it operates as a living museum, furnished to show how an early Tahoe family actually lived.
It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Standing among the shops and traffic of modern Tahoe City, the Watson Cabin is a small, solid reminder of the hardy pioneers who first made a year round home on this high mountain shore.
