Thunderbird Lodge and the Reclusive Millionaire

Along this rugged eastern shore sits one of Lake Tahoe's strangest and most fascinating estates, the Thunderbird Lodge, built by a millionaire recluse named George Whittell Junior. Born in San Francisco in eighteen eighty one, Whittell was heir to one of the city's greatest fortunes. When his father died in nineteen twenty two he inherited many millions of dollars, and in a stroke of remarkable timing he sold nearly all his stocks just weeks before the crash of nineteen twenty nine, walking away with roughly fifty million dollars intact.

In nineteen thirty five Whittell bought about forty thousand acres and some twenty seven miles of Lake Tahoe shoreline, nearly the entire Nevada side of the lake. He hired the Nevada architect Frederic DeLongchamps to build a stone lodge, completed in nineteen thirty six. Its most famous feature is a tunnel roughly six hundred feet long running from the main house to the boathouse, so the eccentric owner could move about unseen.

There he kept his prized wooden speedboat, the Thunderbird. Whittell was famous for his lions, his pet elephant, and his wild parties, but also for what he refused to do. He never developed his vast holdings, mostly out of a craving for privacy.

The unintended result is that the eastern shore stayed wild. When you see that undeveloped shoreline, you are partly looking at the legacy of one strange, solitary man.