Tahoe National Forest

Tahoe National Forest covers a roughly 1.2-million-acre stretch of the northern Sierra Nevada north and west of Lake Tahoe -- granite ridges, deep Gold Country river canyons, and dozens of high-country reservoirs, with the Pacific Crest Trail and historic Donner Pass running right through it. Its western canyons were torn up by Gold Rush hydraulic mining, and it still catches some of the deepest snow in the Lower 48. Cool twist: despite the name, Lake Tahoe itself isn't really in the forest -- the shoreline is its own management unit, and Tahoe National Forest wraps the wild country north and west of the lake.

The place

Tahoe National Forest spreads across a roughly 1.2-million-acre swath of the northern Sierra Nevada in California -- climbing from the oak-and-pine foothills above the Sacramento Valley up over the granite crest to the Nevada line. Only about 850,000 acres of that is actually public forest; the rest is a checkerboard of private inholdings left over from the railroad and mining days. It's a landscape of high granite ridges, deep river canyons, and dozens of glittering reservoirs, and it's one of the busiest playgrounds in the whole Sierra: the Pacific Crest Trail runs its length, historic Donner Pass crosses its crest, and some of the deepest snow in the country piles up along the way. It's also Gold Rush ground -- some of the most torn-up, storied country in California.

History

The forest grew out of the Lake Tahoe Forest Reserve, set aside in 1899, and was reorganized and expanded into Tahoe National Forest under the young Forest Service around 1905-06 (a neighboring Yuba reserve was folded in about the same time). Long before that, this was home to the Washoe, the Nisenan (Southern Maidu), and neighboring Maidu and Miwok peoples. Then came 1848 and the Gold Rush, which hit this country about as hard as anywhere: miners rerouted whole rivers and blasted hillsides apart with water cannons chasing gold, and towns like Nevada City and Downieville boomed on the strike (Truckee, just east over the crest, came later as a railroad and logging town). This was also the great crossing of the Sierra -- the Donner Party wintered in the Truckee-Donner corridor on the forest's edge in 1846-47, and twenty years later the Transcontinental Railroad was punched over Donner Summit.

Wildlife & plants

Black bears are the forest's most famous residents -- the northern Sierra holds a healthy population, and they're a regular presence around campgrounds (hang your food) -- along with mule deer, coyotes, and mountain lions you're far more likely to read in tracks than to see. Overhead there are Steller's jays in the pines, and bald eagles and ospreys working the bigger reservoirs. The lakes and rivers are trout water -- rainbow, brown, and brook trout -- with kokanee salmon (a landlocked form of sockeye) in reservoirs like Stampede. The forest layers up by elevation through ponderosa and Jeffrey pine, sugar pine -- which grows the longest cones of any pine in the world -- incense cedar, and red and white fir up high.

Notable features

The forest's signature landmark is the Sierra Buttes -- a jagged, saw-toothed crest topping out around 8,590 feet, crowned by an old fire lookout you reach by climbing a set of open steel stairs bolted to the bare rock (the highest ground on the forest is actually Mount Lola, a bit over 9,100 feet). The western slope gives rise to the upper Yuba, Bear, and American rivers, while the east side drains into the Truckee; together they feed a chain of high reservoirs -- Bowman, Jackson Meadows, Stampede, Prosser, Boca, and more. Donner Summit crosses the crest on the east side of the forest, and the Pacific Crest Trail traverses that crest the whole length of the unit.

Cool to know

• Despite the name, Lake Tahoe itself isn't really in Tahoe National Forest. The shoreline and basin are run by a separate outfit, the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (created in 1973), while Tahoe National Forest wraps the country north and northwest of the lake. The Forest Service gets asked about this so often it explains the mix-up on its own website.
• The Sierra Buttes fire lookout is famous for how you get to it: a long series of steel steps and open catwalks bolted onto the bare rock face, ending at a tiny cab perched on the summit -- a heart-in-throat climb to one of the best views in the northern Sierra.
• This is hydraulic-mining country. At Malakoff Diggins, next door to the forest and now a state historic park, 19th-century miners aimed giant water cannons at whole hillsides to wash out the gold. So much debris choked the rivers downstream that the 1884 Sawyer decision banned dumping it into the waterways -- one of the country's first big environmental rulings, and the thing that finally shut large-scale hydraulic mining down.
• The Transcontinental Railroad was hauled over the Sierra right here at Donner Summit in the 1860s. Chinese laborers hand-drilled the summit tunnels through solid granite and laid up the dry-stone retaining walls -- the famous 'China Wall' -- some of which still stand along the old road, even though the working railroad has since moved to a newer tunnel.
• Donner Pass catches some of the deepest seasonal snow in the Lower 48 -- the dense, heavy, high-water stuff locals call 'Sierra Cement,' which can bury the pass under many feet at a time.
• The Donner Party was trapped by early, brutal snow in the Truckee-Donner corridor on the forest's edge in the winter of 1846-47. The pass, the lake, the summit, and a nearby forest interpretive site at Alder Creek all still carry the name.