Lake Tahoe Outlet Gates

A two-decade argument about a lake, settled by learning to measure snow. The gates were first built in 1870, and conflicting control of them set lakeshore owners against Truckee River water users downstream in what the state calls the Tahoe Water War. It was settled in 1910 and 1911, once Dr James E. Church had worked out how to determine the water content of snowpack and the seasonal rise of the lake could be predicted and controlled.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sand Harbor — 12 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers
• Donner Memorial State Park — 12 mi
  Where the Donner Party spent the winter of 1846, marked by cabin stone and a monument built to a remembered snow depth.
• Glenbrook & Spooner Summit — 12 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
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 13 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

• Pioneer Ski Area of America — 5.4 mi
• First Transcontinental Railroad — Truckee — 11 mi
• Sand Harbor — 12 mi
• Donner Monument — 12 mi