Lake Tahoe and the Growing Importance for Environmental Preservation
Lake Tahoe, an enormous expanse of clear, blue, fresh water surrounded by meadows and dense forests and rimmed by snow-capped peaks, is one of the world's great scenic and ecological wonders. Tahoe's water is world famous for its amazing clarity. Even today, one can see objects 70 feet below the surface, a clarity matched almost nowhere in the world. The Tahoe Basin had a slowly evolving and essentially balanced environment for thousands of years, with surrounding forests, meadows and marshlands helping to maintain the clarity and purity of the lake.
This pristine environment also provided habitat for great diversity of plants and wildlife. Hundreds of species of native plants thrived in forest, marsh, and meadow. But now, in scarcely a century, an equilibrium that endured for thousands of years is rapidly being lost due to environmental degredation and resource values are steadily deteriorating because of human activities. While there is an appearent lose of wildlife and environment that exists in The Lake Tahoe Basin, there is also an insurgance of environmental conservation that has become increasingly powerful in the attempt at stopping these adverse affects on the environment from happening in the hope that the beauty of Lake Tahoe will continue to exist for generations and generations more.
The first major change in the environment came with the logging of the 1860s, when much of the basin's forest was clear-cut. The logging tapered off with the collapse of the mining boom, but not before most of the Tahoe's virgin forest was gone. By the 1920s, cars and better roads made Tahoe accessible to the ordinary visitor, and landholdings began to be subdivided for summer homes, especially along the southern and western portions of the basin.
The urbanization of the Tahoe Basin remained a relatively slow process until the 1950s, when the opening of Highway 50 and the completion of Interstate 80 brought the San Francisco Bay area within a four-hour drive.
This pristine environment also provided habitat for great diversity of plants and wildlife. Hundreds of species of native plants thrived in forest, marsh, and meadow. But now, in scarcely a century, an equilibrium that endured for thousands of years is rapidly being lost due to environmental degredation and resource values are steadily deteriorating because of human activities. While there is an appearent lose of wildlife and environment that exists in The Lake Tahoe Basin, there is also an insurgance of environmental conservation that has become increasingly powerful in the attempt at stopping these adverse affects on the environment from happening in the hope that the beauty of Lake Tahoe will continue to exist for generations and generations more.
The first major change in the environment came with the logging of the 1860s, when much of the basin's forest was clear-cut. The logging tapered off with the collapse of the mining boom, but not before most of the Tahoe's virgin forest was gone. By the 1920s, cars and better roads made Tahoe accessible to the ordinary visitor, and landholdings began to be subdivided for summer homes, especially along the southern and western portions of the basin.
The urbanization of the Tahoe Basin remained a relatively slow process until the 1950s, when the opening of Highway 50 and the completion of Interstate 80 brought the San Francisco Bay area within a four-hour drive.
Bibliography: League to Save Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe 's Annual Clarity Chart, South Lake Tahoe, California. Douglas Strong, Tahoe: An Environmental History. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, c1984), pp 22-31. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, About TRPA: Mission Statement. Online. Available: http://www.trpa.org/Mission.htm. Accessed: June 1, 2005. U.S. Forest Service, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Lake Tahoe Federal Advisory Committee. Online. Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/ltbmu/local/ltfac/. Accessed: June 1, 2005. U.S. Census Bureau. California Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990. Online. Available: http://www.census.gov/population/cencounts/ca190090.txt. Accessed: June 1, 2005.