After the Comstock Lode was found in Nevada near Lake Tahoe in 1859, fortunes were made and lost by the turn of a card, the fall of a pistol's hammer, the clicking of dice, and, some say, the rumble of bears tumbling down mountainsides and into the big blue lake.

The Comstock was gigantic deposit of silver near what is now Virginia City NV. Ten years earlier the gold rush of 1849 had attracted 25,000 people to California, but soon the gold was panned out--gone. When silver was found in Nevada, get-rich-quick imaginations were again inflamed and people flocked to Nevada from all directions, including California, next door.

Money could be made in many ways. There was mining in Nevada; logging around Lake Tahoe; and gambling, lodging, and entertainment of all kinds for all comers, around the Tahoe region. The mountains of money also stirred political ambitions in Nevada, and the desire to become a state (as California had done in 1850) is entangled in this lost legend.

Silver was reached by going deep into the earth via mine shafts. This was different than gold that was mined on the surface along steam beds. Mine shafts required timbers to brace them and make them useable by miners. At their deepest, the Comstock mines went 3,200 feet below the surface of Nevada.

Billions in Silver
There has never been much timber in Nevada, so the silver mining companies had to depend on the forested Sierra mountains and, particularly, on the Tahoe Basin that was just over the hill from Virginia City. In twenty years (1859-79), Tahoe was stripped bare of its trees. They were cut, usually milled (cut) into large pieces of timber, hauled to the mines, and lowered into the earth to support the shafts. Over the 20 years the mines, supported by Tahoe timber, yielded $500-600 billion (2007 dollars) in silver and gold.

One of the big challenges for the loggers was how best to get either logs or cut timber from Lake Tahoe to the mines. The lake was at an elevation of 6,200 feet. The Virginia City mining camps were at about the same elevation. In between was the Carson Range of mountains that runs north and south along the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. The range has half-dozen peaks near 9,000 feet and only four passes, even today. At the time of Comstock Lode, there were two competing routes from the Tahoe Basin to the mines plus one major engineering "miracle" that was on the drawing boards in Carson City.



Spooner Route
This route ran from Glenbrook on Lake Tahoe to Carson City. The summit is at 7,146 feet. (Today the route is essentially Highway 50.) Logs were cut all around the Tahoe Basin and floated/towed to bustling Glenbrook. At Glenbrook they were loaded onto horse-pulled wagons and hauled up and over the summit to Carson City and the mines around nearby Virginia City ("VC" on the maps). Since Glenbrook was in the Nevada territory, many Nevada interests favored this route.

Truckee Route
This route followed the Truckee River, Lake Tahoe's only outlet. The river runs from the northwest corner of the lake through the towns of Truckee and, now, Reno, all the way to the river's end in Pyramid Lake. Logs were floated cut along California?s West and North Shores of the lake and then floated to and down the river to Truckee and then Reno. At Reno, they were loaded on wagons and hauled to local mills or the mines that were 15 or so miles to the southeast. California logging and political interests favored this route.



The Marlette Lake Plan
A potential, third route, at the heart of this legend, was at 7,823 feet, high (1,600 ft.) above Sand Harbor on Lake Tahoe. Marlette is 15 miles south of what is now Incline Village. Nevada mining company financiers and engineers developed an idea. In brief, it was to bore a 4,000-foot tunnel from Marlette eastward though the Carson Range to a spot in Carson Valley at (today's) Lakeview, Nevada. From there it would be a relatively easy task to move logs or timbers downhill to the mines. Marlette was in the middle of forested country. If logs could be shipped downhill from Marlette, supplying the mines would be greatly simplified, which would lower timber costs.



At the time or this story, logs from the Marlette region were gravity-fed westward down three big, vertical chutes into Lake Tahoe. Once in the lake, the logs were towed over water in log booms to either Glenbrook or Tahoe City for movement over Spooner Summit or down the Truckee River. This was a lengthy process. The Marlette Plan would replace this process. Nevada forces (mine owners and politicians) favored the Marlette idea; California forces did not and they threatened to vote against Nevada statehood if the Marlette tunnel was constructed because the tunnel would be "environmentally destructive." This is the first known use of environmental protection on a large political issue.

Conflict
Since there was a lot of money at stake, each existing route (Spooner and Truckee) and the Marlette Plan had its own financiers, fans (workers), henchmen, and promoters. Curiously enough, advocates of each of the three routes had logging camps near Marlette Lake, and each had it's own chute for sliding logs down into Lake Tahoe. The camps' proximity led to more than one fistfight and shootout as the debate over the who owned which log and used which chute and route to the mines continued and slowly escalated.

Meanwhile, in mid-1864 political war was also boiling. The Nevada territory had separated from the Utah territory in 1861 and had been lobbying for statehood ever since. Republicans in the U.S. Congress favored Nevada's statehood because the state was business-oriented compared to the more liberal California. The Republicans actually were working to hurry Nevada into statehood to help re-elect Abraham Lincoln on November 8, 1864. California, on the other hand, opposed statehood and said that Nevada was defacing Lake Tahoe via logging, Carson Valley via mining, and the eastern mountainside of Lake Tahoe with the scars from the three logging chutes above Sand Harbor.

Finally, in September 1864, lawlessness broke out around Marlette Lake as the number of standing trees was shrinking and the cries from the mines for "more timber" (before the silver runs out!) increasing. In particular, competition for the overlapping use of one of the three chutes down the mountainside intensified because the logging camp that made the greatest use of the chutes made the most money for the loggers involved.

The lawlessness and resulting bad press did not help Nevada's quest for statehood, so a small committee was quickly formed by the U.S. Congress and a delegation was sent from Washington B.C. to investigate the charges and counter-charges of anarchy in Nevada and environmental degradation around Marlette Lake, including the proposed tunnel through the Carson Range. The head of the congressional delegation was a Senator McBama.

Senator McBama
The senator arrived in Carson City and was quickly swept up in the excitement of silver mining. Nevada was thriving. However, his enthusiasm waned when he was escorted on horseback by the sheriff and a big posse to the Marlette Lake area. Most of the roughnecks had been dispersed deep into the woods, but the three huge scars on the mountainside seemed to irritate the senator deeply as he gazed down them and out across the twinkling Lake of the Sky. "What are these?" he asked, shaking his head from side to side. "Is this what Nevada will do to what everyone agrees is a national treasure (Lake Tahoe)?"

The wily sheriff turned slowly to him and said: "Those are natural, senator. Those are bear slides. That is how the bears get down to the lake to swim and catch fish. Those slides have probably been there a hundred years." The senator seemed to accept the answer.

The tour continued around Marlette Lake to the place where the potential tunnel would be built. There was no evidence of work or boring at the site. "Just a pipe dream," said the sheriff.

When the party retuned to Carson City that evening, the senator and his committee were hosted at an enormous gala event featuring dancing girls, an opera singer (Fe Fe LaRue), and several speeches, including one by Mark Twain who was a reporter for the local, Virginia City Territorial Enterprise newspaper. A year earlier, Samuel Clemens had first started using his famous pen name, Mark Twain.

Senator McBama hurried back to Washington B.C. and reported favorably on his trip. Nevada was rushed into statehood on October 31, 1864, eight days before the presidential election, which Lincoln won. (Lincoln was assassinated in April the following year, one week after the end of the Civil War.)

Incline Village
The 4,000-foot tunnel from Marlette Lake to Carson Valley was actually built and entrepreneurs also built a major log mill on the Northeast Shore of Lake Tahoe. The mill included the construction of a steep, double-tracked, cable-powered railway from the mill to the top of the Carson Range near Marlette Lake. It had an average grade of 35% and a maximum grade of 66%. The start, or bottom, of the railway became known as Incline Village.



The three log chutes were never used again and they have been known as the bear slides ever since.


Copyright (c) 2009 Steven C. Brandt