North Lake Tahoe Historical Society

The North Lake Tahoe Historical Society was founded in 1969 and incorporated in 1971 by a group of concerned citizens who saw many of our North Lake Tahoe landmark structures torn down in the 1960's to build condominium developments. Determined to preserve our Tahoe City history, the non-profit, public benefit corporation dedicated itself to the study, preservation and interpretation of Lake Tahoe history. Its first major project was to preserve the Historic Gatekeeper's Log Cabin, then to rebuild the Gatekeeper’s Log Cabin as our first North Tahoe Museum after it was destroyed by arson fire in 1978.

Since February, 1992, with the donation of the Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Collection, our mission has expanded to include the study, preservation and interpretation of Indian baskets and Indian artifacts.
The Society maintains a historic park on the lake which was for hundreds of years a Washoe Indian campsite, and is now home to two premiere Museums in Tahoe.

Watson Cabin

The picturesque Watson Cabin, which sits on the bluff overlooking the North Lake Tahoe Commons, was built by Robert Montgomery Watson in 1908 as a wedding gift for his youngest son, Robert H. Watson and his new bride, Stella Tong. The elder Watson, who was then the local Constable, had come to Tahoe City in 1875 from Bradford County, Pennsylvania, by way of Foresthill in Placer County, where he had met and married Sarah Cunningham, a native of Maine.

In 1887, Watson and his wife leased the Tahoe House, a popular wayside inn, and for the next decade they ran this establishment together. During this period, the Watson’s had five children: Alice May, Edna Nevada, Herbert Sydney (Bert), Francis Gilbert (Frank) and Robert Howard (Rob).

In 1897, Watson found himself lured by the call of the Klondike gold rush, and with his oldest son Frank, who was then 14, he set out to gain his fortune in the Yukon gold fields, leaving the remaining family members to operate their Tahoe City business. On Watson's return to Tahoe City in 1900, son Frank remained behind to work their mining claim.
Soon thereafter, Watson built another log cabin structure in Tahoe City, to be occupied by the resident Gatekeeper who tended the dam which controls the flow of water down the Truckee River. Though this building was later destroyed by fire, its replica stands on the site, on the south bank of the river, and is today the Gatekeepers Museum, open to the public from May through October

On his return from a second trip to the Yukon in 1904, Watson was appointed the North Lake Tahoe area's first Constable, an office he held for the next 28 years, supplementing this livelihood with work as a guide, mill operator and trail finder. Watson was among the town's most revered citizens, and was fondly known as "Grandpa" by all the local youngsters. It was said that there was no horse in the area which would fail to answer his beckoning whistle, and every dog in town knew his friendly pat.
In the last years of his life, Watson devoted himself to the marking of early trails in the region, and in 1930, accompanied by his faithful army horse Brownie, he traced one major route taken by California's early settlers, building a stone monument just west of the head of Squaw Valley, which he dedicated to the many pioneers who had helped to settle the west as well as to those men who had served their country in the first World War.

Watson's youngest son Rob, for whom the cabin was built, was born in 1886 in San Francisco. He was a student at the first school in Tahoe City, which had been built by his father, and later attended Oakland Technical School. When Rob married Stella Tong in 1909, the couple moved into the little log house on the bluff, and Rob became involved in the local building trades, constructing many piers and breakwaters along the west shore of the Lake.

Stella Tong was born in 1890 in Clarksville (14 miles west of Placerville), and had come to know Tahoe at an early age. Two of her sisters had married two brothers of the Scott family, who owned Deer Park Springs (now the site of the River Ranch at the entrance to Alpine Meadows), and for years her brother Wert managed the Tahoe Inn. Stella drove the Tahoe school bus for many years, and was a devoted friend to local school children.

The Watson’s' daughter Mildred was born in 1910, and the family continued to occupy their log residence each summer. They did spend several winters in the little log cabin, but found it too cold and isolated for their liking, eventually relocating to the Foresthill area when the first snows arrived, returning each summer to operate a lumber company on Front Street (Hwy. 28) purchased from Walter Bickford in 1920.

By the mid-1920s, the family had begun to find the traffic and noise of Tahoe City's downtown intolerable, and in 1926, they bought several hundred acres of land northeast of Burton Creek, where they established a sawmill. Thereafter, the family lived on this property in the summer, spending their winters in Gold Hill, in western Placer County.

In 1947, the Watson’s leased their log cabin to E.P. "Husky" and Fern Hunt, who operated it as a gift shop each summer through 1976. The Hunts sold gifts from around the world, including a renowned collection of Navajo Indian rugs.

From 1976 until 1990, Betty Layton and her daughter Judy leased the property, selling handcrafted pottery, Navajo rugs and Mrs. Layton's watercolors under the name of The Potter's Wheel.

The North Lake Tahoe Historical Society and the Tahoe City P.U.D. were able to purchase the property in 1979, and it is now listed in the National Register of Historic Sites as the oldest home, built on-site, in Tahoe City. It also claims the town's first private indoor bathroom, and is certainly among the area's most picturesque residences, with its chinked log construction and sweeping North Lake Tahoe vista.

Gatekeeper’s Museum

The History

The Gatekeeper's Log Cabin Museum, situated among ancient conifers on the south bank of Lake Tahoe's only outlet, was built in 1981 with funds raised by the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society. Built by Art Thiede in the Canadian scribing method, the hand carved log cabin is built from Lodgepole Pines. It stands on the same foundation as the original Gatekeeper's Cabin, which was destroyed by fire in 1978.

The original Gatekeepers Cabin, built sometime between 1910 and 1916, served as the home of the resident Gatekeeper, whose duties included the measuring and regulation of Tahoe's water level within legally prescribed limits. Between 1910 and 1968, five different men are known to have held the position of Gatekeeper, each one in turn occupying the cabin while carrying out the duties of the position.

In 1986, the decision to raise or lower Tahoe's water level became the province of the Federal Water master’s Office in Reno, though the physical process of raising and lowering the gates of the dam continue to be carried out onsite, using the same hand-turned winch system employed by the original Gatekeeper.

The concrete dam which exists at the North Lake Outlet today was not the first effort to regulate the flow of water down the Truckee River. As early as 1870, a log crib structure several miles downstream of the outlet was built by one Colonel Alexis Von Schmidt, with the purpose of raising a head of water sufficient to flush logs down the river to Truckee mills. Von Schmidt was also author of an unsuccessful scheme to divert water from the river through a tunnel bored beneath Donner Summit, connecting with a pipeline by which he proposed to supply water to the City of San Francisco.

A second timber dam, built nearer the outlet was intended as a means of regulating the level of Tahoe, but proved inadequate in the face record high water in 1907. By 1909 it was partially removed, a new concrete dam being half completed. The new dam was finished in 1913, its completion postponed by a lengthy court battle over the proper jurisdiction of the water. The concrete dam originally included only nine gates, but was subsequently extended to 17 gates, the number it has today.

The Museum

The North Lake Tahoe Historical Society’s Gatekeepers Museum and Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum features the history of Lake Tahoe, including Indian artifacts, Indian baskets, Tahoe historical photographs, old Tahoe newspapers and oral histories, Washoe Indian history and vintage Tahoe memorabilia. Indian baskets include words from Dat-so-la-lee and Maggie Mayo James. And coming in 2005, a special exhibit of Dat-so-la-lee Baskets.

Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum

Welcome to the Edmund S. Barnett wing of the Gatekeepers' Museum, which houses the Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Collection. The two names associated with this collection each have a reputation for expertise and community service.

Marion Steinbach's lifelong interest in Native American art, culture and Indian baskets led her to study and collect representative Indian baskets and artifacts, and by the time of her death in 1991, she had gathered over 800 rare and diverse baskets, dolls and artifacts, each of which she carefully described and documented - truly a collection of world-class stature.

Marion Steinbach was herself a weaver of considerable skill and artistry, and taught basket weaving classes each summer at the Gatekeeper’s Museum in Tahoe City. Several of her works are displayed within its walls, along with the representative works of over 80 tribes, including our local Washoe Indians and Paiute Indians, as well as other tribal weavers from the Great Plains to Alaska. Baskets of several tribes of the Klamath Lake and River region are well represented.

It was Marion Steinbach’s intent to collect a variety of Indian basket and artifact types for as many tribes as possible, and the woven works range in size from burden baskets measuring nearly three feet in diameter to highly detailed sample pieces as small as 1/4". Adding to the intriguing diversity of the collection are such artifacts as gambling trays and caribou hoof rattles. One display cabinet contains nothing but woven hats.

Edmund S. Barnett, for whom the Museum wing which houses the basket collection was named, also passed away in 1991. For more than 30 years, Barnett had practiced law in Incline Village, selflessly devoting his free time and multiple talents to countless civic causes on the North Shore and beyond. He had been an active member and supporter of the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society since its inception, serving as its President, attorney and dauntless guiding light. Thus it was most appropriate that the new Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum wing bear his name.

Layton Park

If you are planning a North Tahoe wedding, Layton Park, operated by the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society, and located at the Gatekeepers Museum and Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum in Tahoe City, offers the ideal outdoor Tahoe wedding location.