Tahoe retreat

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – I had seen Lake Tahoe only in winter, its shores under deep snow. So, on Day 1 of my first warm-weather trip, I couldn’t stop prowling the water’s edge, scanning for new hues of blue.

On Day 2, I rented a bike. On Day 3, I hiked above Emerald Bay into the mist of Eagle Falls.

So how, on Day 4, did I wind up in an artificial subterranean blackness, stranded in a stone tunnel near a dead playboy’s boathouse?

Blame the rich. Or thank them.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when New York’s hotshots were putting up lakeside summer retreats in the Adirondacks, some of the West’s wealthiest families were putting the first necklace of summer mansions around Lake Tahoe, which lies partly in California and partly in Nevada.

Some of these homes were stuffy and traditional, but others were extravagances – secret passages, Viking design – that no sensible family could sustain for more than a generation or two.

In the past 60 years, a half-dozen of these properties have landed in the hands of public agencies or nonprofit groups. And in summer, they open for tours. I hit all six of them.

Lake Tahoe, which marks the northern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, sits in a basin 6,229 feet above sea level, fed by runoff from surrounding mountains that stand as tall as 10,000 feet.

The lake measures 22 miles long, 10 miles wide and up to 1,685 feet deep. Tourists have been visiting since the 1860s, when a young writer named Mark Twain wrote a few admiring words (“the fairest picture the whole Earth affords”) now etched in a boulder at North Tahoe Beach.

You can drive around the lake in about three hours. I started on the northern shore, 40 miles southwest of Reno, Nev.

I didn’t linger in the gambling houses of Crystal Bay on the Nevada side, as did Frank Sinatra, President John F. Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe, who are all said to have spent time at the Cal Neva Resort.

Instead, heading south and west, I hit Commons Beach, just steps from the shops and restaurants of Tahoe City’s main drag.

If you can find a parking spot nearby, you can explore the pebble beach near a big playground and lawn, only a block or two from the little dam and bridge where the lake flows into the Truckee River.

Biking and running paths follow the lake shore. One trail follows the river to Squaw Valley USA, the all-seasons resort that hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics.

Near the Homewood area is the walled estate of Fleur du Lac. Built by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, this is where Francis Ford Coppola shot much of “The Godfather: Part II.” It’s been converted to condos, so there’s no chance to sneak inside.

About 10 southbound miles from Homewood is Ed Z’berg-Sugar Pine Point State Park, which includes hiking trails, a nature center, a creek with seasonal fishing, a settler’s cabin that dates to 1872 and a mansion that you can get into.

The Hellman-Ehrman Mansion, aka Pine Lodge, was built in 1903 as a getaway for banker Isaias W. Hellman of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The house is a California Craftsman: three stories, nearly 12,000 square feet, with eight cedar columns fronting the porch.

At one point, the resident staff totaled 27. The state acquired it in 1965.

“When this house was built, only 10 percent of homes in this country had indoor plumbing. And we have eight bathrooms here on the second floor,” State Parks Ranger John Harbison said.

Next, we come to Emerald Bay, a glittering green pool that was carved by a glacier and is connected to the rest of the lake by a narrow passage. At the center of the bay lies the lake’s only island, Fannette.

Absurdly wealthy people in 1928 owned vacation houses here, including a widowed philanthropist, Lora Josephine Knight. Her father and her former husband were captains of industry, controlling National Biscuit, Continental Can, Diamond Match and Union Pacific railroad.

Knight wanted a Scandinavian mansion because the bay made her think of fiords. By the time the stock market crashed in late 1929, the work was done on Vikingsholm.

Swedish architect Lennart Palme and his team chiseled boulders, carved timbers, elaborately painted walls and ceilings, planted sod roofs, devised spiked eaves to repel evil spirits, put up six fireplaces and installed European fixtures and furniture dating back centuries.

On Fannette Island, workers built a stone teahouse accessible only by boat.

This good life lasted 15 Tahoe summers. Eight years after Knight’s death at age 82 in 1945, the state acquired the property as part of Emerald Bay State Park.

Next, I spent a night at Camp Richardson, which has rented cabins and rooms since the 1920s. The U.S. Forest Service owns the land, and concessionaires run the lodgings, campground, RV village, stables, bike and watersports rentals, ice cream parlor and Beacon restaurant, where a raccoon approached me on the deck to demand lunch.

“Camp Rich,” as the locals call it, is not fancy. But my room was fine, and a cabin was spotless and reasonably priced.

On a windless morning, walking on the pier was like stepping into a watercolor: no sound, glassy water, reflected evergreens.

No wonder mining millionaire E.J. “Lucky” Baldwin built one of the lake’s first resorts here in the 1880s, then inspired others to raise three vacation houses after it eventually was torn down.

Between 1965 and 1971, the Forest Service picked up all three: the Baldwin Estate (1921), the Pope Estate (1894) and the Heller Estate (aka Valhalla, 1923), collectively known as Tallac Historic Site.

These places do not match the grandeur of Vikingsholm or Pine Lodge, but to the west is a visitor center at Taylor Creek. And east is Pope Beach, one of the lake’s best for swimming.

On drives around the lake, the eastern shore seems faster. You can stop at the casinos on the Nevada side or at Zephyr Cove Resort, but north of Zephyr Cove, civilization evaporates.

How is it that the tree-hugging, whale-saving State of California has so thoroughly developed its side of Lake Tahoe, while growth-loving, casino-friendly Nevada has built so little?

The answer lies beyond George Whittell Jr.’s old front gate.

Whittell, born into a San Francisco society family whose wealth dated to the Gold Rush, was a spoiled rich kid, thrice married, twice divorced, inclined to drink hard, consort with chorus girls and collect menacing pets. He named his lion Bill, his elephant Mingo.

In the months before the crash of 1929, Whittell pulled $50 million out of the stock market. When the chance came to buy 40,000 acres of Nevada – including 27 miles of Tahoe’s eastern shore – Whittell had the cash.

Between 1936 and 1940, he and architect Frederick DeLongchamps built the rock-walled Tudor-Revival Thunderbird Lodge on the stony northeastern shore.

Craftsmen included an Italian ironworker, Norwegian woodcarvers and a small army of American Indian stonemasons who worked on the 600-foot granite tunnel connecting the main house, the card house and the boathouse.

And although he did sell some land that was developed, Whittell decided to leave his shoreline acreage alone and keep his privacy. Amid rumors of secret liaisons, crazed parties and high-stakes poker games with Ty Cobb and Howard Hughes, Whittell held onto most of the property until his death at age 87 in 1969.

“The drinking didn’t get to him,” said Bill Watson, executive director of Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. “The smoking didn’t get to him. The womanizing didn’t get to him.

“But the nude sunbathing did. He died of melanoma.”

After that, a series of estate owners undertook purchases, additions, swaps and resales. At one point, mutual-funds mogul Jack Dreyfus built additions that are easy to spot, then sold the estate for about $50 million to development company Del Webb in 1998.

The Forest Service now owns most of Whittell’s land, and the house and outbuildings belong to the nonprofit Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society. In 2002, the society started offering summertime tours.

Watson gave me a brief introduction, took me down to the tunnel, then let me prowl on my own.

I checked out the boathouse, then re-entered the 600-foot tunnel, let the door close behind me and everything went black. Somebody at the other end had turned out the lights.

I stood there, not seeing my hand in front of my face.

Then I remembered my camera. Clicking every few seconds to throw red light onto the walls, I inched my way to the card house, then stepped from darkness out to the sun-splashed lakefront world.