Lake Tahoe ... A History of the Name

Minden, Nevada is the County seat for Douglas County.  The Western portion of Douglas County is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains including portions of Lake Tahoe.  Lake Tahoe is one of the great lakes of the world renowned for its clarity and size. Tahoe is 22 miles long, 12 miles wide, has a 72 mile shoreline and a surface area of 191 square miles.  The average depth is 1,000 feet, the deepest portion being 1,645 feet.  It is simply spectacular - Emerald Bay is one of the top five most photographed places in the world. 

Lake Tahoe and environs have many ski resorts with the largest, Heavenly Valley, located in Douglas County.  The famous Casinos at the South Shore, Harrah's, Mont Bleu, etc., make substantial financial contributions to the County through their tax contributions and employment base.  The Lake offers boating, fishing, golf, rock climbing, skiing, hiking and more.  It is a recreational paradise.

So how did Lake Tahoe get its name?  Notwithstanding the long, respectable history of the Washoe Indian Tribe and their many references and reverences to it, it was named "Lake Bonpland" by John C. Fremont, one of the lake's first White discoverers. On a blustery  Valentines Day, February 14, 1844, Captain Fremont's exploration party, guided by Christopher "Kit" Carson, saw the blue expanse from a distance for the first time.  Fremont named the lake for Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland a French botanist who had accompanied Alexander von Humboldt in his explorations.  The name Lake Bonpland never became popular, and other names were utilized from "Mountain Lake" to "Fremont's Lake." By 1853, the name "Lake Bigler" began to be applied to maps of the lake recognizing California's third governor.  The name was officially changed the following year by the state legislature.

Lake Bigler never quite stuck as a name and maps referred to the lake not only as Bigler, but also as "Mountain Lake" and "Maheon Lake." At the start of the Civil War, 1861, former Governor Bigler became an ardent Confederate sympathizer. Unionists and Republicans alike derided the former governor's name on the lake on official state maps.

The mapmaker for the federal U.S. Department of the Interior, joined the political argument in 1862 when he asked a member of the Sacramento Union paper for a new name for the lake. "Tahoe," was suggested, a local tribal name believed to mean "water in a high place." It was agreed, and the mapmaker telegraphed the Land Office in Washington, D.C. to officially change all federal maps to read "Lake Tahoe."

"Lake Tahoe", too, had difficulty gaining universal acceptance. Mark Twain was a critic of the new name calling it an "unmusical cognomen." He lampooned the name in editorials in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and in his 1869 novel Innocents Abroad. The California State Legislature countered the Feds in 1870 reaffirming that the lake was called "Lake Bigler."