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LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – I had seen Lake Tahoe only in winter, its shores under deep snow. So, on Day 1 of my first warm-weather trip in May, I couldn’t stop prowling the water’s edge, scanning for new hues of blue.
On Day 2, I rented a bike. On Day 3, I hiked above Emerald Bay into the mist of Eagle Falls.
So how, on Day 4, did I wind up in an artificial subterranean blackness, stranded in a stone tunnel near a dead playboy’s boathouse?
Blame the rich. Or thank them.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when New York’s hotshots were putting up lakeside summer retreats in the Adirondacks, some of the West’s wealthiest families were putting the first necklace of summer mansions around Lake Tahoe, which lies partly in California and partly in Nevada.
Some of these homes were stuffy and traditional, but others were extravagances – secret passages, Viking design – that no sensible family could sustain for more than a generation or two.
In the past 60 years, a half-dozen of these properties have landed in the hands of public agencies or non-profit groups. And in summer, they open for tours.
Between outdoor adventures, I hit all six of those old mansions. And if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature don’t close down Lake Tahoe’s state parks before Labor Day, you can too.
Lake Tahoe, which marks the northern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, sits in a basin 6,229 feet above sea level, fed by runoff from surrounding mountains that stand as tall as 10,000 feet.
The lake measures 22 miles long, 10 miles wide and up to 1,685 feet deep. Tourists have been visiting since the 1860s, when a young writer named Mark Twain wrote a few admiring words ("the fairest picture the whole Earth affords") now etched in a boulder at North Tahoe Beach.
In light traffic, you can drive around the lake in about three hours. Afoot on the 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail, the circuit might take 15 days. I started on the northern shore, 40 miles southwest of Reno, Nev.
Heading south and west, I hit Commons Beach, just steps from the shops and restaurants of Tahoe City’s main drag.
If you can find a parking spot nearby, you can explore the pebble beach near a big playground and lawn, only a block or two from the little dam and bridge where the lake flows into the Truckee River. Biking and running paths follow the lake shore, and one trail follows the river for about five miles to Squaw Valley USA, the all-seasons resort that hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics.
Near the Homewood area is the walled estate of Fleur du Lac. Built by industrialist Henry Kaiser, this is where Francis Ford Coppola shot much of "The Godfather: Part II" in the early 1970s. It has been converted to condos, so there’s no chance to sneak inside.
About 10 southbound miles from Homewood is Ed Z’berg-Sugar Pine Point State Park, which includes hiking trails, a nature center, a creek with seasonal fishing, a settler’s cabin that dates to 1872 and a mansion that you can get into.
The Hellman-Ehrman Mansion, aka Pine Lodge, was built in 1903 as a getaway for banker Isaias Hellman of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The house is a California Craftsman: three stories, nearly 12,000 square feet, with eight cedar columns fronting the porch. At one point, the resident staff totaled 27. The state acquired it in 1965.
"When this house was built, only 10 percent of homes in this country had indoor plumbing. And we have eight bathrooms here on the second floor," State Parks Ranger John Harbison said.
Next, we come to Emerald Bay, a glittering green pool that was carved by a glacier and is connected to the rest of the lake by a narrow passage. At the center of the bay lies the lake’s only island, Fannette.
Absurdly wealthy people in 1928 owned vacation houses here. As did an heiress-widow-philanthropist named Lora Josephine Knight. Her father and her former husband were captains of industry, controlling National Biscuit, Continental Can, Diamond Match and Union Pacific railroad.
Knight wanted a Scandinavian mansion because the bay made her think of fiords, and by the time the stock market crashed in late 1929, the work was done on Vikingsholm.
Swedish architect Lennart Palme and his team chiseled boulders, carved timbers, elaborately painted walls and ceilings, planted sod roofs, devised spiked eaves to repel evil spirits, put up six fireplaces and installed European fixtures and furniture dating back centuries. On Fannette Island, workers built a stone teahouse accessible only by boat.
This good life lasted 15 Tahoe summers. Eight years after Knight’s death at age 82 in 1945, the state acquired the property and made it part of Emerald Bay State Park.
Next, I spent a night at Camp Richardson, which has rented cabins and rooms since the 1920s. The U.S. Forest Service owns the land, and concessionaires run the lodgings, campground, RV village, stables, bike and watersports rentals, ice cream parlor and Beacon restaurant, where a raccoon approached me on the deck to demand lunch.
"Camp Rich," as the locals call it, is not fancy. But my room was fine, and a cabin was spotless and reasonably priced.
With the camp’s water frontage and spacious grounds, it’s one of the few places where a family can park the car and forget about it for days. On a windless morning, walking on the pier was like stepping into a watercolor: no sound, glassy water, reflected evergreens.
No wonder mining millionaire E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin built one of the lake’s first resorts here in the 1880s, then inspired others to raise three vacation houses after that resort eventually was torn down.
Between 1965 and 1971, the Forest Service picked up all three houses: the Baldwin Estate (1921), the Pope Estate (1894) and the Heller Estate (aka Valhalla, 1923), now collectively known as Tallac Historic Site.
These places do not match the grandeur of Vikingsholm or Pine Lodge but to the west is a visitor center at Taylor Creek. And east is Pope Beach, one of the lake’s best for swimming.
From U.S. 50 and Nevada 28, there are few buildings. You might wonder: How is it that the tree-hugging, whale-saving state of California has so thoroughly developed its side of Lake Tahoe, while growth-loving, casino-friendly Nevada has built so little?
The answer lies beyond George Whittell Jr.’s old front gate. Whittell, born into a San Francisco society family whose wealth dated to the Gold Rush, was a spoiled rich kid, thrice married, twice divorced, inclined to drink hard, consort with chorus girls and collect menacing pets.
In the months before the crash of 1929, Whittell pulled $50 million out of the stock market. When the chance came to buy 40,000 acres of Nevada – including 27 miles of Tahoe’s eastern shore – Whittell had the cash.
Between 1936 and 1940, he and architect Frederick DeLongchamps built the rock-walled Tudor-Revival Thunderbird Lodge on the stony northeastern shore of the lake.
The Forest Service now owns most of Whittell’s land, and the house and outbuildings belong to the non-profit Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. In 2002, the society started offering summertime tours.
This is not a side trip for everybody. The tab for the 75-minute Thunderbird tour is $39. But the estate is a singular place – the way the house and its little lighthouse are wedged among the boulders and trees, the mansion’s own lagoon.
