Rising tensions over an adored three-mile stretch of Truckee River in Hirschdale spur on property owner action, a working group roundtable, and a new county recreation master plan.
In the early 1900s, few people would have accused the Southern Pacific Corporation of acting in the public interest, much less of working to preserve the natural environment. The much more popular view was that of “The Octopus,” a 1901 novel by Frank Norris that presented a thinly disguised Southern Pacific as a giant, greedy, self-serving enterprise with its tentacles into everything. But in 1925, Southern Pacific’s self-interest coincided with that of protecting our natural treasures.
The Lake Tahoe Railway and Transportation Company goes through the Truckee Canyon.
Courtesy Truckee-Donner Historical Society
‘Resort and Pleasure Interests at the Lake will Have to Yield’
CHEYANNE NEUFFER Tahoe Daily Tribune, via AP
STATELINE, Nev. The past year was such a wild ride that even the thought of a tsunami at Lake Tahoe probably doesn’t sound out of reason.
Several thousand years ago, according to Richard Schweickert, a retired University of Nevada, Reno geology professor, the lake experienced just such an event.
While a specific date is the hard to pinpoint, it is estimated that a tsunami struck after an earthquake in the basin about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Schweickert has spent most of his career working in the Sierra Nevada, and has been collecting evidence about tsunamis in Lake Tahoe.