D.L. Bliss, a successful timber baron who had been in business in Nevada since 1907, watched as the lumber from the forests surrounding Carson City, Nev. began to dwindle. So he and his business partner Henry M. Yerington decided to move a little further west. They picked Glenbrook, Nev. as their new logging headquarters, which sat right on the edge of the Jewel of the Sierra. To get lumber from the Basin to a vast woodyard in Carson City, and then onto the mines at the Comstock Lode, Yerington and Bliss used the Summit Flume. But they also needed a link to the summit so they constructed an 8.75-mile long, narrow-gauge railroad that ran from Glenbrook up steep switchbacks to Spooner Summit, according to Lake Tahoe’s Railroads by Stephen E. Drew. The rail ran two trains, Tahoe and Glenbrook, which puffed up and back — the critical link to supporting the lumber and flume operations.
D.L. Bliss’ business acumen didn’t stop with lumber: By his 60s he had scoped out the real estate market around Lake Tahoe, and outlined a new industry in the Sierra — tourism. Just like with the success of his lumber endeavor, one essential piece of Bliss’ puzzle was transportation — how would he get guests to the lake? Before that time, anyone who traveled to Lake Tahoe came by stagecoach after getting off the train in Auburn, a long journey. But Southern Pacific Railroad was nearing completion of a train route from Auburn to Truckee, so all Bliss had to do was build the final connection. He entrusted his son William Seth Bliss, a civil engineer, to map out a train route, according to The First 100 Years by Carol Van Etten. With a team of trusted businessmen from Bliss’ Glenbrook enterprise, the Lake Tahoe Transportation Company formed, and the 14.75-mile long connection from Truckee to the shores of Tahoe City was built.
The route followed along the Truckee River, crossing it a few times. The rail was a 3-foot-gauge track with a 2.5 percent grade, according to Drew. The railroad then ended right on the pier at Bliss’ resort, the Truckee Tavern, on the west shore of Tahoe City. The passengers could hop off the train, walk across the pier, and climb aboard one of Bliss’ steamer boats, which took passengers around the lake. The tourist experience was seamless.
The trains would then continue on down Commons Beach to the site of the current Tahoe City Marina, to drop off cargo and be serviced. Bliss had planned out every detail of his new business infrastructure in Tahoe City and desperately needed places to maintain the trains and housing for his employees. From his construction projects in Glenbrook, Bliss knew all too well that the building season in Tahoe was unforgivingly short. So instead of building all new structures, he decided to use what he had. Bliss instructed his men to take everything they could use from the Glenbrook property, including complete houses that they winched onto his steam-powered work vessels, the Emerald and the Meteor, “literally floating his empire across the Lake to the scene of its next incarnation,” writes Carol Van Etten.
Then the crew unloaded the vessels and relocated the buildings in Tahoe City. There were two large structures by the marina that were used to house cargo cars when being worked on. The current Tahoe City Marina building was originally a site for rail yard maintenance and what is now Dockside Restaurant was used for lumber storage. Almost all of the original structures from Glenbrook have long since been replaced except for the kitchen and the bar in Wolfdale’s Cuisine Unique Restaurant, which was originally a logger’s house in Glenbrook.
The railroad connection from Truckee made Tahoe City a tourist destination. Originally, guests would only come in the summertime, but eventually, guests began to venture here during the winter as well thanks to the ease of taking the train.
Read about the new life for Truckee’s rail yard, see here.
To read more about the history of Wolfdale’s Cuisine Unique Restaurant read their new cookbook, reviewed here.
