Lake Tahoe
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Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe is a freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada, located where the borders of the U.S. states of California and Nevada bend, near Carson City. Approximately two-thirds of the shoreline is in California. The area, referred to as Tahoe, is home to a number of ski resorts and summer outdoor recreation.
It is the second deepest lake in the United States, the eleventh deepest on Earth, and the fourth deepest in average depth.
Lake Tahoe is one of the deepest, largest, and highest lakes in the United States. Only Oregon’s Crater Lake is deeper at 1930 feet.
Although for much of Tahoe’s perimeter, highways run within sight of the lake shore, some important parts of the California shoreline now lie within state parks or are protected by the United States Forest Service. Lake Tahoe is about 22 mi (35 km) long and 12 mi (19 km) wide and has 72 mi (116 km) of shoreline and a surface area of 191 square miles or 495 square kilometers.
The Lake Tahoe Basin was formed by geologic block (normal) faulting about 2 to 3 million years ago. A geologic block fault is a fracture in the Earth’s crust causing blocks of land to move up or down. Uplifted blocks created the Carson Range on the east and the Sierra Nevada on the west. Down-dropped blocks created the Lake Tahoe Basin in between. Some of the highest peaks of the Lake Tahoe Basin that formed during this process were Freel Peak at 10,891 ft (3320 m), Monument Peak at 10,067 ft (3068 m) (the present Heavenly Ski Resort), Pyramid Peak at 9,983 ft (3043 m) (in the Desolation Wilderness), and Mount Tallac at 9,735 ft (2967 m).
Snowmelt filled the southern and lowest part of the basin, forming the ancestral Lake Tahoe, with rain and runoff adding additional water. Modern Lake Tahoe was shaped and landscaped by the scouring glaciers during the Ice Age (the Great Ice Age began a million or more years ago). Many streams flow into Lake Tahoe, but the lake is drained only by the Truckee River, which flows northeast through Reno, Nevada and into Pyramid Lake in Nevada.
