City Information

Once upon a time, there was a lovely, azure blue lake, surrounded by a lush forest. When Mark Twain first viewed Lake Tahoe, he remarked, "surely this is the finest view the world affords."

Lake Tahoe's first residents were the Washoe and Paiute Indians who lived and fished along its shores. As time passed, and civilization moved west, settlers paused in passes to the north and south to marvel at the color and clarity of this magnificent body of water. Incline Village slept through the Lake's early development, as the centers of activity in the early days sprang up at South Lake Tahoe, Glenbrook and Tahoe City.

In the mid-1800's, lumber interests discovered the Nevada North Shore as an excellent source of lumber for the Washoe mines, and at that point, began methodical logging.

The area was called "Incline" in those days. The name was derived from the double track narrow gauge tramline, which carried logs nearly 1,400 feet vertically to the V-flume, which ran along the mountain top granite outcroppings. The 4,000 foot-long tramline was located in the area that is now Mill Creek Subdivision (hikers will find the scars and remnants of the tramline and flume in the area between Mill Creek and Sand Harbor Beach).

The V-flume carried Incline's timber on the first leg of its route to the water tunnel through the mountains and to the mines of Virginia City and the Washoe Valley.

In 1884 the remote settlement of Incline Village was declared both an election precinct and a fourth class post office, thus marking the first time that Incline was "on the map."

By 1897 Incline had been left a sea of stumps, with a maze of crumbling flumes and rotting log chutes. The ugly duckling of the Lake area, Incline was left to sleep and rejuvenate itself.

In the early 1900s visitors to Lake Tahoe spent glorious summer holidays in the vacation paradises of Glenbrook and Tallac to the south, and Tahoe Tavern and Brockway to the north. A one-lane road connected the north and south shores, and in the 1930's summer homes were built in the area of Incline Beach (south from Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Hotel along Lakeshore Boulevard).

By this time the lumber interests had sold most of the Nevada North Shore from Crystal Bay to Zephyr Cove to a multimillionaire real estate magnate, "Captain" George Whittell. Captain Whittell built his stone castle on a point south of Sand Harbor (his home can be seen from the road as you are driving to the South Shore). Captain Whittell was quite a character, and at one time had wild animals roaming his reserve.