Lake Tahoe’s famous founders
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the wealthiest families in the West were “putting the first necklace of summer mansions” around Lake Tahoe, said Christopher Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times. Today, the doors of these lavish homes are open to the public. Pine Lodge was built in 1903 by a president of Wells Fargo. It’s an enormous “California Craftsman: three stories, nearly 12,000 square feet, with eight rough cedar columns fronting the porch.” Vikingsholm, a 58-room Scandinavian castle built in 1929 for heiress Lora Josephine Knight, overlooks the lake’s only island, Fannette. George Whittell Jr., the scion of a San Francisco society family, brought in Italian ironworkers, Norwegian woodcarvers, and a “small army of Native American stonemasons” to construct the “Tudor Revival” Thunderbird Lodge and its 600-foot underground tunnel.
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