CHAPTER IX

THE LESSER LAKES OF THE TAHOE REGION AND HOW THEY WERE FORMED

This is not to be a description of the scores of Glacial Lakes found in the Tahoe region, but an answer to the questions so often asked about practically all of these lakes, as to their origin and continuance.

Rich as our Sierras are in treasures none are more precious than these. They give one pleasing surprises, often when least expected.

For while the tree-cl.u.s.ters, the mountain-peaks, and the glowing snow-banks throw themselves into our view by their elevated positions, the retiring lakes, secluded, modest, hide their beauty from us until we happen to climb up to, or above, them.

From the higher summits how wonderfully they appear. Let the eye follow a fruitful branch of an apple, pear or peach. How the leaves, the stem, the fruit occur, in sure but irregular order. It is just so with the glacial lakes of the Sierras. They are the fruit of the streams that flow from the glacial fountains. They lie on rude and unexpected granite shelves,--as Le Conte Lake; under the shadow of towering peaks,--as Gilmore Lake; on bald glacier-gouged and polished tables,--as those of Desolation Valley; embosomed in deep woods,--as Fallen Leaf, Heather and Cascade; in the rocky recesses of sloping canyons,--as Susie, Lucile and the Angoras; hidden in secret recesses of giant granite walls,--as Eagle; or sprawling in the open,--as Loon, Spider, etc.

What a variety of sizes, shapes and characteristics they present.

There are no two alike, yet they are nearly all one in their attractive beauty, in the purity of their waters, and in the glory, majesty, sublimity and beauty mirrored on their placid faces.

In poetic fashion, yet with scientific accuracy, John Muir thus describes their origin in his _Mountains of California_, a book every Tahoe lover should possess:

When a mountain lake is born,--when, like a young eye, it first opens to the light,--it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in banks of rock and ice,--bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious cl.u.s.ter of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its gla.s.sy surface, and the sun thrills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless sh.o.r.es,--sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets, honey-worts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new gardens,--kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the healthy bryanthus and ca.s.siope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.

So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the hemlock spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and embowered. But while its sh.o.r.es are becoming enriched, the soil-beds creep out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the lighter mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake vanishes,--closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens and groves that have taken its place.

The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that flow into it, the character of the rocks over which these streams flow, and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series whose basins lie in the same canyon, and are fed by one and the same main stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless some other lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings down, only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the highest of the series to the next below.

Then the next higher, and the next would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways, chiefly through the action of side-streams that enter the lower lakes direct. For, notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite short, and, during late summer, feeble, they all become powerful torrents in spring-time when the snow is melting, and carry not only sand and pine-needles, but large trunks and bowlders tons in weight, sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also have the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of the vanished glacier that occupied the canyon, and upon these they draw for lake-filling material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacier pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus a small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries, while a large perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tamarack and Echo Lakes]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cascade Lake, Near the Automobile Bouldvard, Lake Tahoe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Memorial Cross at Donner Lake]

Many striking examples of these successive processes may be seen in the Tahoe region, as, for instance, Squaw Valley, which lies between the spurs of Squaw Peak and Granite Chief. This was undoubtedly scooped out by a glacier that came down from Squaw Peak and Granite Chief. The course of the ice-sheet was down to the Truckee River.

When the glacier began to shrink it left its terminal moraine as a dam between the basin above and the river below. In due time, as the glacier finally receded to a mere bank of half-glacierized snow on the upper portions of the two peaks, the basin filled up with water and thus formed a lake. Slowly the sand and rocky debris from the peaks filled up the lake, and in the course of time a break was made in the moraine, so that the creek flowed over or through it and the lake ceased to exist, while the meadow came into existence.

CHAPTER X

DONNER LAKE AND ITS TRAGIC HISTORY

Closely allied to Lake Tahoe by its near proximity, its situation on the Emigrant Gap automobile road from Sacramento to Tahoe, and that it is seen from Mt. Rose, Mt. Watson, and many Tahoe peaks, is Dormer Lake,--lake of tragic memories in the early day pioneer history of this region.

It was in 1846 that James T. Reed, of Springfield, Ill., determined to move to California. This land of promise was then a Mexican province, but Reed carefully and thoroughly had considered the question and had decided that, for his family's good, it was well to emigrate. He induced two other Illinois families to accompany him, those of George and Jacob Donner. Thursday, April 15th, 1846, the party started, full of high hopes for the future. The story of how they met with others bound for California or Oregon, at Independence, Mo., journeyed together over the plains and prairies to Fort Hall, where Lansford W.

Hastings, either in person or by his "Open Letter," led part of the band to take his new road, which ultimated in dire tragedy, is well known.

The Oregon division of the divided party took the right-hand trail, while the other took the left-hand to Fort Bridger. It is the experiences of this latter party with which we are concerned.

Misfortune came to them thick and fast from this time on. The wagons were stalled in Weber Canyon and had to be hauled bodily up the steep cliffs to the plateau above; some of their stock ran away, after heartbreaking struggles over the Salt Lake desert; mirages intensified their burning thirst by their disappointing lure; Indians threatened them, and finally, to add despair to their wretchedness, a quarrel arose in which Mr. Reed, in self-defence, killed one of the drivers, named Snyder. Reed was banished from the party under circ.u.mstances of unjustifiable severity which amounted to inhuman cruelty, and his wife and helpless children, the oldest of them, Virginia, only twelve years of age, had to take the rest of the journey without the presence of their natural protector. Food supplies began to give out, the snow fell earlier than usual and added to their difficulties, and before they reached the region of the Truckee River they were compelled to go on short rations. Then, under suspicious circ.u.mstances one of the party, Wolfinger, was lost, and though his wife was informed that he had been murdered by Indians, there was always a doubt in the minds of some as to whether that explanation were the true one. On the 19th of October, an advance guard that had gone on to California for food, returned, bringing seven mules ladened with flour and jerked beef. The story of this trip I have recounted more fully in the book _Heroes of California_. Without this additional food the party never could have survived. On the 22nd they crossed the Truckee River for the forty-ninth time.

Heavy snow now began to intercept their weary way. They were finally compelled to take refuge in an abandoned cabin near the sh.o.r.e of what is now known as Donner Lake, and there, under circ.u.mstances of horror and terror that can never fully be comprehended and appreciated, the devoted men, women and children were imprisoned in the snow until the first relief party reached them, February 19th, with scant provisions, brought in at life's peril on snowshoes. A "Forlorn Hope" had tried to force its pa.s.sage over the snowy heights. Fifteen brave men and women determined to see if they could not win their way over and send back help. Out of the fifteen seven only survived and reached the Sacramento Valley, and they were compelled to sustain life by eating the flesh of those who had perished.

The second relief party was organized by Mr. Reed,--the banished leader--and thirty-one of the party were still in camp at Donner Lake when he arrived, with nine stalwart men to help, on March 1st. On the 3rd nine of them left, with seventeen of the starving emigrants, but they were caught in a fearful snow-storm as they crossed the summit, and ten miles below were compelled to go into camp. Their provisions gave out, Mrs. Graves died, leaving an emaciated babe in arms and three other children, one a five-year-old, who died the next day.

Isaac Donner died the third night. Reed and Greenwood, carrying Reed's two children, Mattie and James Jr., with one of the survivors who could walk, now struggled down the mountain in the hope that they could reach help to go back and finish the rescue work. These met Mr. Woodworth who organized the third relief party, of seven men, who returned to "Starved Camp," to find the survivors begging piteously for something to eat. This relief party divided into two parts--one to go over the summit to give help to the needy there, the other to get the "Starved Camp" remnant to safety. The first section succeeded in their mission of mercy and a few days later caught up with the other section from Starved Camp.

Mr. C.F. McGlashan, formerly editor of the _Truckee Republican_, has written a graphic account, with great care and desire for accuracy, of the complete expedition, which gives the heart-rending story with completeness, and I expect to publish ere long the personal story of Virginia Reed Murphy, who is still alive, one of the few survivors of the ill-fated party.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Steamer at the Wharf, Tahoe Tavern, Lake Tahoe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Donner Lake, on the Automobile Highway from Sacramento to Truckee and Lake Tahoe]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Canyon of the Truckee River in Winter]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Automobiling along the Picturesque Truckee River, on the way to Lake Tahoe]

Through privations and hardships untold the survivors were ultimately enabled to reach Sutter's Fort, only to find the most vile and fearful stories set in circulation about them. Four separate relief parties were sent from California, and their adventures were almost as tragic as those of the sufferers they sought to help. Bret Harte, in his _Gabriel Conroy_, has told much--though in the exaggerated and unjust form the stories were first circulated--of the Donner tragedy, and it has been made the subject of much newspaper and other writing and discussion.

An unusual trip that can be taken from Tahoe Tavern is down to the foot of Donner Lake and then, turning to the left, follow the old emigrant and stage-road. It has not been used for fifty years, but it is full of interest. There are many objects that remain to tell of its fascinating history. Over it came many who afterwards became pioneers in hewing out this new land from the raw material of which lasting commonwealths are made. Turning south to Cold Stream, it pa.s.ses by Summit Valley on to Starved Camp. The stumps of the trees cut down by the unfortunate pioneers are still standing.

It was always a difficult road to negotiate, the divide between Mt.

Lincoln and Anderson Peak being over 7500 feet high. But those heroes of 1848-49 made it, triumphing over every barrier and winning for themselves what Joaquin Miller so poetically has accorded them, where he declares that "the snow-clad Sierras are their everlasting monuments."

This road is now, in places, almost obliterated. One section for three miles is grown up. Trees and chaparral cover it and hide it from the face of any but the most studiously observant. When the road that takes to the north of Donner Lake was built in 1861-62 and goes directly and on an easier grade by Emigrant Gap to Dutch Flat, this road by Cold Stream was totally abandoned. For years the county road officials have ignored its existence, and now it is as if it never had been, save for its memories and the fragments of wagons, broken and abandoned in the fierce conflict with stern Nature, and suggesting the heart-break and struggle the effort to reach California caused in those early days.

CHAPTER XI

LAKE TAHOE AND THE TRUCKEE RIVER

As is well known, the Truckee River is the only outlet to Lake Tahoe.

This outlet is on the northwest side of the Lake, between Tahoe City and Tahoe Tavern, and is now entirely controlled by the concrete dam and head-gates referred to in the chapter on "Public uses of the Water of Lake Tahoe."

When Fremont came down from Oregon in 1844, he named the river _Salmon Trout River_, from the excellent fish found therein, but the same year, according to Angel, in his _History of Nevada_, a party of twenty-three men, enthused by the glowing accounts they had heard of California, left Council Bluffs, May 20th, crossed the plains in safety, and reached the Humboldt River. Here an Indian, named Truckee, presented himself to them and offered to become their guide. After questioning him closely, they engaged him, and as they progressed, found that all his statements were verified. He soon became a great favorite among them, and when they reached the lower crossing of the river (now Wadsworth), they were so pleased by the pure water and the abundance of the fish to which he directed them, that they named the stream "Truckee" in his honor.

This Capt. Truckee was the chief of the Paiutis, and the father of Winnemucca (sometimes known as Poito), and the grandfather of Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, long known in Boston and other eastern cities, where she lectured under the patronage of Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Ole Bull, Miss Longfellow, and other prominent women, as the Princess Sallie. When I first went to Nevada, over thirty-three years ago, I soon got to know her and her father, Winnemucca, and met them constantly.

Sarah always claimed that Truckee and Fremont were great friends and that it was the Pathfinder who named the river after her grandfather, but nowhere in his _Report_ of the 1843-44 Expedition does he mention Truckee, and he called the river the "Salmon Trout River"; and this name he retained both in the report and map published in his _Memoirs of My Life_, Vol. I only of which was issued by Belford, Clarke and Company, of Chicago, in 1887.

Hence Sallie is undoubtedly mistaken in this regard. But on several points she is correct, and too great emphasis cannot be laid upon these facts. They are, I, that Truckee guided several emigrant parties, even as far as Sutter's Fort, California (where Sacramento, the Capital of the State, now stands); II, that he was always friendly, true and honest in his dealings with the whites; III, that had the emigrants and settlers in Nevada treated him as honestly as he did them there would never have been any conflicts between the Paiutis and the whites; IV, that when the latter first came to the country he called councils of his people and bade them welcome the newcomers with open arms.

He died just as the wrongs inflicted upon the Paiutis were making them desperate and resolved on war. Though his son, Winnemucca, is well known never openly to have waged war against the whites, it was thoroughly understood that secretly he favored it. But had his father lived and retained his health and power there is little doubt but that the open conflict would have been averted, and many precious human lives on both sides saved.

The Truckee River has its rise in Lake Tahoe, flows northward and breaks through the Mount Pluto ridge in a narrow canyon, one thousand to two thousand feet in depth. While the canyon is narrow and its slopes, especially on the east, are rocky and steep, it is not exactly gorge-like, except for the s.p.a.ce of a mile or so, a short distance below Tahoe. For twelve miles the river follows a northerly course, and it is then joined by Donner Creek flowing from Donner Lake.

The united streams then turn eastward and take a course across the northern end of the gravelly flat of Martis Valley, in a channel two hundred to two-hundred-fifty feet below the level of the plain. At Boca it cuts through the eastern range with a canyon one thousand to three thousand five hundred feet in depth and emerges on the plains of Nevada between Verdi and Reno. It returns again to the north below Wadsworth, having run sixty-nine miles from Donner Creek, and then, flowing sixteen more miles, it discharges into Pyramid Lake. At Tahoe the river begins at an elevation of 6,225 feet above sea level; at Pyramid the level is 4,890 feet, thus giving the river a fall of 1,335 feet in ninety-seven miles.

The Truckee River receives a number of large tributaries; the princ.i.p.al ones being Little Truckee River and Prosser Creek, the former heading in Webber Lake, the latter in the main range of the Sierras, most of its sources lying in small lakes held in hollows and basins excavated by glaciers.

Until it was contaminated by the refuse of civilization its waters were pure and healthful, but legal enactments have been necessary to protect the stream from sawdust and other pollutions.