Editor’s note, Oct. 14: Date added for clarification about original founding.
In the late 1950s and ’60s, sewage and pollution were draining into Lake Tahoe daily. The 1960 Olympics, the growing popularity of Tahoe as a tourist destination, and an influx of development put the glassy blue waters at risk. An article in the San Francisco Examiner from 1967 reported sewage was entering the lake at a staggering “200,000 gallons a day.”
“The lake needed some severe protection,” said renowned limnologist Dr. Charles Goldman.
The League to Save Lake Tahoe, an environmental nonprofit backed by the science of Goldman, realized the weight of preserving this marvel of the world with its turquoise and inky-blue waters. But the problem of sewage — and even its treatment — on top of the ravaging of the shorelines by developers threatened to turn Tahoe green.
“The league needed a rallying cry,” declared Chris Joseph, communications director at the league. “They needed a slogan, they needed something patchy and simple and action oriented.”
The nonprofit ended up crafting the phrase, which became so popular that it was known on an international scale as its iconic bumper stickers circled the globe. Yet its inception remains ambiguous.
“The League to Save Lake Tahoe picked up on the idea that the lake was changing, was in danger of losing its historic transparency,” said Goldman. “That was sort of the birth of the idea of ‘Keep Tahoe Blue.’”
Joseph echoed Goldman’s sentiment about the importance of Tahoe’s hue.
“Everybody was well aware of the lake’s color. Everybody really appreciated and cherished it, knew that it was unique to this place, and it was something everybody could get behind,” said Joseph.
However, no one remembers where the phrase had come from or when it originated. Though league co-founder Bill Evers in a 2014 interview on the early history of the organization remembered the slogan’s creation as originating in 1969, documents reveal references to the phrase four years prior.
“In 1965, the leaders of the organization changed the name and filed official paperwork that probably updated our articles [of] incorporation,” said Joseph. In these papers, “my colleagues and I found at least the first, the oldest reference to the phrase ‘Keep Tahoe Blue’ that any of us have ever seen.”
Originally founded as the Tahoe Improvement and Conservation Association (TICA) in 1957, the nonprofit changed its name on Aug. 6, 1965. In the league’s amended articles of incorporation the same year, it details its goal “to perform all acts necessary to keep Lake Tahoe blue;” however, no one was credited with coining the phrase. It simply continued spreading.
And so the slogan was born, paired with the league’s campaign to prevent sewage from being pumped into the lake. The slogan communicated exactly the goal and what was at stake for a lake known for its blue splendor.
“It just kind of took off in popularity,” said Jim Bruner, the executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe from 1972 to 1984.
Few alterations have been made to the organization’s original logo, used on a letterhead starting in 1967. When the bumper sticker was created (Bruner remembers them first as decals in 1972/73), the slogan garnered a level of popularity and recognition that had it translated into Spanish; Washoe, as a collaboration with the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California; and Russian, as a crossover between Tahoe and Lake Baikal, the Siberian version of Tahoe.
“I’ve visited all 50 states now, and I can’t believe how widespread the distribution of the Keep Tahoe Blue bumper stickers are,” said Cameron Wolfe Jr., one of the league’s board members from 1965 to 1990. “You see them everywhere.”
Newspapers throughout Northern California referenced the league’s work in 1965, noting its memorable slogan, and Wolfe said Ronald Reagan backed the conservation movement when he became governor of California in 1967. Goldman, who was the primary limnologist collecting data on the lake and keeping track of increasing algal growth rates, noted that the league was the main public group concerned with the lake when he began studying it in 1958.
Along with the successful blocking of the construction of a highway bridge straight across Emerald Bay, one of the league’s first campaigns was to export sewage out of the Tahoe Basin. Goldman said his most important scientific contribution to protecting the lake’s clarity was helping stop the discharge of sewage into the lake and around the Basin.
I’ve visited all 50 states now, and I can’t believe how widespread the distribution of the Keep Tahoe Blue bumper stickers are. You see them everywhere.”
~ Cameron Wolfe Jr., League to Save Lake Tahoe Board Member from 1965 to 1990
“Collaborations between the league founders and Dr. Goldman set the table and set the mold for exactly the way that we operate today,” Joseph said. “That science is the backbone of all the decisions that we make in order to protect the lake.”
The partnership changed the course of Lake Tahoe’s development. Bruner noted the immense economic interest of Nevada in the area, its development of hotel casinos, and how difficult it made the early preservation of the lake.
After years of lobbying at town hall meetings, to the public, and to politicians, even pro-development advocates agreed that conservation was in everyone’s best interest and would maintain the lake’s attraction and tourism. Furthermore, an early achievement of the league was its successful push for the formation of the Bi-State Compact, which created the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and superseded local authority with its regulatory power. The conservation of Tahoe had become a national issue that garnered support from Gov. Reagan, Nevada Gov. Paul Laxalt, President Richard Nixon, and others.
“I consider three things to be the most important that happened while I was involved,” Wolfe stated. “Number one was the creation of the compact. That was a huge victory.”
Number two and three, said Wolfe, were negotiating the Forest Service’s acquisition of Meeks Bay Resort and convincing Northstar developers to build outside of the Basin.
According to Bruner, the league’s slogan was instrumental in its fight and lent itself to the nationwide recognition of the unique quality of the lake. In 1980, Bruner wrote in the National Parks & Conservation Magazine that Tahoe’s beauty was being degraded by the smog and pollutants of urbanization. Without the early intervention of the league, many say, the lake’s grandeur would have been tainted and perhaps tinged green.
Sixty years later, the lake faces similar challenges to its clarity and the League to Save Lake Tahoe continues to drive advocacy and action. Its fight isn’t over to “Keep Tahoe Blue” amid threats from climate change, aquatic invasive species, and pollution.
“The sole fact that the slogan has remained pretty much unchanged for 60 years speaks volumes to how well-crafted it was from the beginning,” said Joseph. “It really does capture in three words a shared purpose.”
Never Heard of the League to Save Lake Tahoe?
You’re not alone. The League to Save Lake Tahoe is commonly known by its ubiquitous slogan. Even league staffers call it Keep Tahoe Blue.
“[The slogan] was distinctive and it caught on. The newspapers would refer to the league as Keep Tahoe Blue,” said Jim Bruner, league executive director from 1972 to 1984.
