When the Basin Was Clearcut
Near Incline Village, Nevada
If the forest around you looks oddly uniform, dense stands of trees all about the same age, there is a reason that goes back more than a century. When the Comstock Lode was booming in nearby Virginia City, the Lake Tahoe Basin paid the price. Between roughly eighteen sixty and eighteen ninety, loggers cut down almost all of the basin's native forest to feed the mines.
The tunnels beneath Virginia City needed endless timber to keep from collapsing, and the growing city needed lumber and firewood. Tahoe's slopes were the nearest great supply. The cutting was relentless and selective.
Crews went first for the biggest, most valuable trees, the towering Jeffrey and ponderosa pines and sugar pines, drought resistant and fire resistant giants that had stood for centuries. Near clearcut logging swept the hillsides between the early eighteen seventies and nineteen hundred. When it was over, the mountainsides were nearly bare.
The forest that grew back was different. Without the big pines, and without regular fire to thin the young trees, the slopes filled with dense, moisture loving firs, all sprouting at once. That even aged, overcrowded forest is more vulnerable to disease and to catastrophic wildfire, and land managers are still working to undo the damage today.
The green mountains around Lake Tahoe are beautiful, but they are largely a second growth forest, a living echo of the silver rush.
