Credit in Google
Credit in Google
About 3 to 3.5 million years ago, a system of north-south trending faults (fractures in the earth’s crust) began moving. The upward movement of the surrounding mountains and the downward fall of the valley bottom along these faults formed a basin that contained an ancestral Lake Tahoe.
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A much deeper body of water continued to form as the lake bottom fell. Approximately 2.5 million years ago, escaping water eroded through the volcanic edifice forming the existing lake outlet and Truckee River headwaters.
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The water surface of Lake Tahoe sits at an average elevation of 6,225.1 ft or 1.2 miles above sea level. This creates the metaphorical and poetic name, "Lake of the Sky," for a lake that is so high in elevation; it literally and figuratively resides in the heavens. In addition, the name “Lake of the Sky” comes from the many moods of the sky reflected on the surface of the Lake.
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The name Tahoe comes from a mispronunciation of the Washoe Native American name for Lake Tahoe, da ow a ga, which means, “edge of the lake.”
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The Tahoe Basin straddles the California-Nevada border. The coordinates of the geographic center of the main body of Lake Tahoe are 39° 06’ 30” N and 120° 01’ 51” W. Lake Tahoe and its watershed spans the montane and subalpine life zones.
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The surface of the Lake is at an elevation of 6,225 feet above historical sea level. The surrounding mountain peaks vary from 9,000 to nearly 11,000 feet.
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