De Ek Wadapush - Cave Rock

To the Washoe people this granite mass on the lakeshore is De ek Wadapush, rock standing gray—a sacred place revered for thousands of years, traditionally approached only by healers seeking spiritual renewal, and tied to the Water Babies of Washoe belief. It was never a site for casual visitors. In 1931 a highway tunnel was blasted through the rock, and a second followed in the 1950s; the tribe likened the dynamiting to bombing a church. Cave Rock is now listed as a Traditional Cultural Property, and rock climbing on it has been banned out of respect for its meaning.

What the plaque says

A sacred place to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, cave rock is the subject of many legends. Named for a cave, a remnant of which can be seen some 200 feet above the waterline. This formation was a landmark on the Lake Bigler Toll Road in the early days. Quarried granite blocks, which support the toll road, can still be seen on the west face of cave rock. The rock was first tunneled for the construction of a highway in 1931 and the second tunnel was put through in 1957. The Washoe name for Cave Rock is De-ek Wadapush which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. It is important now as it has been for thousands of years for the Washoe. " Medicine men meditated and prayed here" and many distinct features help make up our culture, gifted basket makers, the wisdom of long-preserved legends, and our traditional way of life. Cave Rock was one of our prominent sacred sites reflecting our traditional values of respect for the land and "da ow" (Lake Tahoe) the life-sustaining water, the center of the Washoe world (Washoe elder)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cave Rock / De'ek Wadapush — 0.2 mi
  One of the most sacred places of the Wašiw—the Standing Gray Rock, a worn volcano the highway was blasted through and climbers bolted for sport, now closed and quiet again after the Washoe's long fight to protect it
• Glenbrook & Spooner Summit — 2.9 mi
  Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back
• Genoa — 6.2 mi
  Nevada's oldest town—a California Trail trading post and Carson Valley ranch country that came eight years before the silver and quietly outlasted it
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 9.2 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides

More markers nearby

• Glenbrook — 2.5 mi
• Spooner Area (Logging and Lumbering Period: 1868- 1895) — 4.5 mi
• Spooner Summit — 5.0 mi
• Carson Valley — 6.2 mi