Tahoe By Car
Automotive Adventures
Imagine what an adventure it must have been for Tahoe’s early motorists. Traveling in open-air Model Ts and Oldsmobiles, vacationers began driving as roads connected the Lake’s recreation spots. Completed in 1913, a rough road around Emerald Bay linked Tahoe’s south and west shores. Today the highway is known as Highway 89.
Workers spent months dynamiting the route out of granite to complete the road. A popular steamer excursion brought vacationers to the bay to witness the rocks being blasted hundreds of feet in the air. With the completion of the road and others around the lake, commercial steamers began to lose their appeal as transportation. In 1940, the steamer Tahoe was deliberately sunk off Tahoe’s east shore.
Marker can be reached from Emerald Bay Road (State Highway 89), on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
