Naming Lake Tahoe

Intensely blue, majestic in size, and surrounded by massive jagged peaks, its landscape of vibrant colors inspires a sense of grandeur. Measuring some 22 miles long by 12 miles wide, it straddles the border of two states, though not equally; Lake Tahoe is two-thirds in California and one-third in Nevada. It is the largest alpine lake in North America, and at a depth of 1,645 feet, the second deepest lake in the United States. 

Over the ages, it has been called by many names.

The first American to make mention of its existence was explorer John Charles Frémont, in February, 1844, when he and his team of U.S. Topographical Engineers crossed into the cold and snowy Sierra from approximately the location of modern Minden, Nevada. Said Frémont, “Beyond a defile between the mountains, descending rapidly about 2,000 feet [was] a sheet of green water, some twenty miles broad. It broke upon our eyes like the ocean. The neighboring peaks rose high above us. It was set like a gem in the mountains.”

Frémont gave it the grand name of “Lake Bonpland,” in honor of the French botanist Aimé Bonpland. In November, 1844, six members of the Stephens-Murphy-Townsend Party—the first overlanders to take covered wagons over the Sierra—were the first Euro-American emigrants to set foot on the shores of the lake, but there is no evidence they gave it a name.

Six years passed, years of upheaval and transformative change. The Mexican-American War ended with Mexico’s cession of California to the United States. The gold discovery drew tens of thousands of new people into the territory, from all over the world. Finally, California was admitted as the 31st state of the Union in September, 1850. 

Through it all, while gold fever raged in California’s foothills, that beautiful lake in the High Sierra remained unspoiled by commercial development for almost another ten years; although, new trailblazers and official surveyors had indeed substituted John Frémont’s grandiose Lake Bonpland with “Mountain Lake,” or “Frémont’s Lake.” In the early 1850s, a new name emerged. John Calhoun Johnson, the first state government-hired, trans-Sierra mail carrier, proposed that it be renamed in honor of John Bigler, California’s third American governor.

John Bigler was an acknowledged hero, a man who had risked his own life to give aid and comfort during Sacramento’s 1850 cholera epidemic. Further, as his first term as governor came to a close in late 1853, his reputation was untainted by scandal. A prominent citizen in his own right, John C. Johnson was the creator of Johnson’s Cutoff, a new, safer, lower-elevation emigrant wagon road across the mountains; and the state legislature agreed with his idea. At the height of Bigler’s popularity, that majestic High Sierra lake officially became Lake Bigler, in January 1854. 

Later, however, John Bigler’s character, formerly considered “as clear as the waters of Mountain Lake,” suffered a downturn. Denounced as a Southern sympathizer during the Civil War years, Union advocates raised strong objections to naming such a magnificent natural resource after what they considered a dishonorable Copperhead. Certain members of the legislature suggested the fanciful sounding "Tula Tulia," and other new names were put forth, none of which attracted any ardent supporters.

As it happened, in 1862 one William Henry Knight, mapmaker for the U.S. Department of the Interior, was in the process of completing new maps of the alpine lake in question; and he asked his good friend Dr. Henry DeGroot to suggest a new name for it. DeGroot, a fellow mapmaker, had explored the mountains in 1859, following the fabulous Comstock silver discovery in Nevada; in the process collecting a vocabulary of native Indian words in the Washoe dialect.

One of those words, which Dr. DeGroot’s ears translated as “Tahoe,” meant “water in high place.” William Henry Knight, among many who—putting it politely—held that the former governor “had done nothing to distinguish himself,” agreed. He immediately wrote the Land Office in Washington that the large map he was publishing would substitute “Lake Tahoe” in place of Lake Bigler. The new name, like the old, was not universally accepted. Mark Twain, among others, objected, as did the waffling state legislature, who changed it back in 1870.

Yet by the end of the 19th century, Lake Bigler was a forgotten name; and in 1945, the California legislature, once again, officially decreed that the name was Lake Tahoe. Nowadays travel agencies, casino publicists, and other boosters invent descriptive new nicknames, such as Jewel of the Sierra, and Lake in the Sky, to entice sightseers, sportsmen, and athletes to come to Lake Tahoe for the night time entertainment, and year-round daytime recreational activities.