I was lucky to have grown up in Lake Tahoe, an area surrounded by crystal clear water, stunning bays, sharply jagged peaks, and snow-covered ridges, and have always had a fascination with what we referred to as the bottomless Lake. Located in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the border of California and Nevada, the water is extremely cold and impossible to explore its deepest caverns, contributing to the many expeditions that have taken place to unveil the mysteries and legends of the Lake. As a child, we heard countless rumors from fishermen about floating bodies perfectly preserved from the cold that would float to the surface when the water would warm up, as well as the numerous sightings of a Loch Ness monster-style creature.
Now California state parks officials have announced a new underwater adventure for people to explore along the shoreline of Emerald Bay State Park on a new scuba trail that leads to two sunken barges and 12 boats resting below the surface of the bay.
The Emerald Bay Maritime Heritage Trail will give scuba and snorkel divers access to four locations in the Bay to explore the graves of many boats, launches, and barges used during the 1920′s and 30′s. The boats were intentionally sunk in the 1950′s when they outlived their usefulness. The barges were owned and operated by the lumber companies, who used them to haul wood part of the year and then employed them as car ferries during the summer months. The barges had to be towed or pushed by steamers, and one of them now lies parallel to the shore measuring over 100 feet long. GPS locations now direct divers to a wide variety of wrecks at depths up to 60 feet with markers explaining the history of the vessel and details how they were used.
There is dramatic history in the Emerald Bay area of Lake Tahoe where the new dive trail is located. During the height of its popularity in the 20′s and 30′s, a fabulous Nordic castle was built called Vikingsholm. The owner, billionaire heiress Lora Josephine Knight bought the land to build a summer home similar to those she had seen on her travels to Scandinavia. Utilizing 200 workers the home was constructed during the Summer of 1929. Knight also built a remarkable tea house on the tiny neighboring Fannette Island in the middle of the bay which is said to be haunted by a previous resident of the island, a hermit named Captain Dick Barter who ultimately drowned in the Lake.
While you can now scuba dive to explore sunken boats and wrecks, there is still a lot of mystery of what lies deep below the surface in Lake Tahoe, many of which are only rumors, including dramatic spottings of a Loch Ness Monster-style creature. I swear I saw it once at a distance while fishing as a pre-teen but would never admit that publicly (wink.) The stories of the creature were also documented by the Washoe and Paiute tribes during the 1800′s, and legend has it that the creature lived in an underwater tunnel beneath Cave Rock located on the Eastern shore of the lake. There have been countless sightings of the beast starting throughout the decades beginning in the 50′s when divers reported finding a cave and spotted a creature exiting it, also in the 90′s when kayakers saw a black hump in the water, a story that was repeated often including a crew member aboard the famed Tahoe Queen boat who photographed it.
And the monster isn’t the only thing thought to exist at the bottom of the lake. For many years locals of Lake Tahoe have heard stories of dead bodies, possibly the victims of mobsters from the nearby casino’s being dumped. They say that if you were able to journey to the very bottom of the lake with freezing temperatures, you would find hundreds of bodies wearing clothes from the 20′s to the 60′s. Add that to the numerous drowning victims from boating and swimming accidents that have never been discovered, and the mystery only deepens.
For many years fishermen have claimed to see dead bodies floating on the surface of the lake when the waters warm up. As recently as a few weeks ago, scuba divers found the body of a man who had drowned in the lake 17 years ago, still in his wetsuit. The body was well preserved due to the cold temperatures of the water.
At 1,645 feet, Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in America (Crater Lake in Oregon is the deepest in the country while Russia’s Lake Baikal, at 5,369 feet deep is the world’s largest.) The Lake was created 24 million years ago by the rise and fall of landscape due to faulting, and according to many reports, there may be an underground river system that feeds into Pyramid Lake located north of Reno, Nevada.
With the advent of new advanced submarines and underwater exploration teams, members of the Undersea Voyager Project have now made 58 submarine trips and 33 scuba dives below the waters of Lake Tahoe and Fallen Leaf Lake. One of their most unusual underwater discoveries was an ancient forest at the bottom of Fallen Leaf Lake, adjacent to Lake Tahoe, where 80-foot tall trees, more than 2,000 years old are still standing upright. Check out their video of the exploration below.
Hopefully, someday we will have more absolute proof of what is actually at the bottom of Lake Tahoe but until then our imaginations can run wild with dreams of further explorations and discoveries.
