Years ago sheep owners would bring their flocks up to Lake Tahoe from the Sacramento Valley and the Carson River Valley nearby in Nevada. The sheep would be taken to high, mountain pastures where there was ample grass. Sheepherders would stay with the sheep over the summer mouths and then return the sheep to the valleys over winter.

Rumor has it that the oven in this picture was handbuilt by sheepherders.




Here is a clue to the whereabouts of the oven, which still exists. It is near where the picture was taken.



Below is a picture by the author of sheep being brought into Ward Valley (2 miles west of Sunnyside on the West Shore) in the 1980s.