| 1860 |
| Captain Augustus W. Pray and associates
settled in Glenbrook in the spring of that year. The name
was derived from a stream that ran through the meadow.
They built a log cabin, harvested the wild hay, and planted
grain and vegetables. They were known to have harvested
60 bushels of wheat and 4 tons of hay per acre, while
oats grew 7 and 8 feet high. The indigenous grass was
so profuse that a horse drawn reaper was brought over
the Sierra from San Francisco to harvest it. |
| |
| 1861 |
| By the following summer, the bayshore
was known as Walton's Landing and considered the eastern
shore over-water terminus for the toll pack train leading
from Georgetown, California to McKinney's on Tahoe. From
there the schooner, Iron Duke, or the sloop, Edith Batty,
transported travelers across Tahoe to Walton's. That summer,
the first sawmill, known as Pray's Mill, was built. The
summer of 1861 also brought Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
to Tahoe. With two companions, he staked out a timber
claim in the vicinity of Glenbrook. But, hard work became
of secondary importance as they spent cloudless days fishing
and lazily boating on the Lake. Clemens later described
the Lake in Roughing It as the "fairest crystal
clear water as comparable to floating high aloft in mid-nothingness,
so empty and airy did the spaces seem below him."
A forest fire, inadvertently started by Clemens himself,
pointed up the necessity for their hasty return to Washoe. |
| |
| 1862 |
| With the discovery of the Comstock
in 1859, lumbering demands skyrocketed. Pray bought out
his partners and acquired 700 acres surrounding Glenbrook.
The summer of that year, Shakespeare Rock was named by
the wife of Reverend J. A. Benton from Massachusetts.
While sketching, she noted the lichen formation on the
face of the rock which she felt resembled Shakespeare. |
| |
| 1863 |
| This year the settlement's first hotel,
the Glenbrook House, was built one-half mile up the canyon
by G. H. F. Goff and George Morrill. The Kings Canyon
or Lake Bigler (as it was then named) toll road was also
finished that year. For the next decade, the Glenbrook
House would be considered the finest and most luxurious
on the Lake. Discriminating guests paid $21.00 per week,
which included three meals per day. |
| |
| The steam-powered sawmill, the "Moniter",
was completed in the Fall, and the second hotel, the Lake
Shore House, was built by Captain Pray, several hundred
feet back from the water at the foot of the meadow. This
would eventually become the south wing of the Glenbrook
Inn, with the Jellerson Hotel becoming the north wing,
and the former over-water store making up the center section. |
| |
| 1864 |
| The excursion steamer, "Governor
Blaisdel", was built by Captain Pray. |
| |
| 1871 |
| This year the lake level was six feet
lower than that recorded in 1859 and a great rivalry existed
between Glenbrook and Tahoe City, which was having problems
due to the lower lake level. It is said that a Tahoe City
father overheard his small daughter saying sadly in her
prayers, "good-bye, God, I'm going to Glenbrook."
The populace of Glenbrook argued that the child had obviously
said, "good! By God, I'm going to Glenbrook." |
| |
| 1872 |
| D. L. Bliss arrived in Tahoe that summer
and formed a partnership with Henry Yerington and Darius
Mills and incorporated the Carson Tahoe Lumber and Fluming
Company with Bliss as president and general manager. He
proceeded to buy 7000 acres of timberland and the Summit
or Elliott Brothers Mill. |
| |
| 1873 |
| In the Spring of that year, Bliss purchased
five and one-half acres of lakeshore and meadowland from
Captain Pray, including his mill. He also purchased the
Summit Fluming Company's V-flume and rebuilt and lengthened
it. He then bought Michael Spooner's Lower Mill plus his
New Mill and the old Knox Sawmill east of Spooner Station.
Then they built another steam-powered mill 300 yards south
of the former Moniter or Davis Mill, calling it Lake Mill
Number One. They were now ready to proceed on Tahoe's
most ambitious lumbering venture. |
| |
| 1875 |
| That year, many things happened. A
railroad extending from Glenbrook Bay to Spooner Summit
was inaugurated on July 4th. It comprised of eight and
three-quarter miles of track, costing $30,000 per mile
to construct and would average $3000 per month in operation
and maintenance costs during its 23 years of service.
It rose 910 feet above the lake and as it zigzagged up
the mountain, sections were constructed so that it went
forward on a spur section, a switch was thrown behind
the train and it backed up the next section, then onto
another spur and a switch was thrown in front and it proceeded
forward up the next section. 45 logging cars were purchased
for it, along with two locomotives. Each engine could
pull 70 tons of lumber or cordwood at a maximum speed
of ten miles per hour on the upgrade. The rolling stock
was shipped overland to Carson City and loaded on double-teamed
logging wagons and hauled to Glenbrook. There were eventually
four engines in all. |
| |
| Lake Mill Number Two was built and
the other mills were closed, with the exception of Summit
Mill. In a short space of three years, the booming little
metropolis had become Nevada's leading lumber town with
an anticipated season's production exceeding 21,700,000
board feet. |
| |
| That year, General William Tecumseh
Sherman and President Ulysses S. Grant visited the settlement,
on separate occasions. At that time, the legendary Hank
Monk was handling the reins on stage runs into and out
of Glenbrook. |
| |
| 1876 |
| In August of that year, the 80-foot
iron-hulled Meteor was placed in service. A steam tug
designed to be the fastest of its type in the country. |
| |
| 1879 |
| President Hayes visited Glenbrook. |
| |
| 1881 |
| By this year, Glenbrook had two small
hotels, a store, a genteel saloon, a railroad, machine
shops, several sawmills, a livery stable, and an express
and post office. Glenbrook also had one of the first telephone
lines on the West coast. A private wire was installed
in the Bliss home. |
| |
| 1882 |
| The Jellerson Hotel was built a few
hundred yards south of the present golf course. |
| |
| 1887 |
| The Number Two sawmill burned to it's
foundation. Then mill Number One was run 20 hours a day. |
| |
| 1890 |
| The Jellersons constructed the Dirego
Hotel near the Jellerson Hotel. The record snowfall of
1889-90 produced snow 15 feet deep on the ground with
drifts 35 to 40 feet high. Townspeople had to dig themselves
out of second-story windows or tunnel through the frozen
white blanket. |
| |
| 1891 |
| By summer, horse racing became popular
along the shoreline. |
| |
| The Duane Bliss two and one-half story
mansion contained the only real bathroom in the settlement
and fantastic excuses were thought up by tourists to get
a look at the modern wonder. |
| |
| By the mid 1890's, the tempo of business
was slowing down along with the gold and silver in the
Comstock. |
| |
| 1895 |
| By that year, 47,000 acres of timber
had been cut. Barely 950 acres of usable pine stands remained.
During 28 years of logging activity, it is estimated that
the Carson and Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company took from
the Tahoe Basin more than 750,000,000 board feet of lumber
and 500,000 cords of wood. Truly, in the words of Dan
DeQuille, "the Comstock lode was the tomb of the
forests of Tahoe." |
| |
| The Bliss family formed the Lake Tahoe
Railway and Transportation Company and prepared to move
its scope of operations across the Lake to the California
side. During the next three years, they purchased the
steamers, Meteor and Emerald Number Two. |
| |
| 1896 |
| The Bliss family built the Queen of
the Lake, the 169-foot Tahoe steamer. |
| |
| 1900's |
| By the 1900's, Glenbrook had settled
down and become the Glenbrook Inn and Ranch and its lumbering
days faded into colorful memories. |
| |
|
|
 |
 |
|
| Glenbrook is the
remainder of the once vast holdings of the Carson and
Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company which, at one time, controlled
over 50,000 acres of timber land in the Tahoe Basin and
on the eastern slope of the Sierra. |
|
 |
|
| As a community,
Glenbrook began its history in 1860 when Captain A. W.
Pray built the Lake's first mill on the south side of
Glenbrook Bay. The settlement which evolved around this
early mill grew steadily for the next ten years under
Pray's supervision. |
|
|
|
|
| In 1873, the Carson
and Tahoe Lumber and Fluming Company, headed by Duane
L. Bliss, began acquiring large tracts of land in and
around the Glenbrook area. |
|
|
|
|
| Under Bliss's direction,
a railroad was built to carry cordwood and lumber from
the Company's new Glenbrook mills to the top of Spooner
Summit for transportation by flume to Carson City, 14
miles away. |
|
|
|
|
| Here the wood was
loaded onto cars and carried to Virginia City for use
in the Comstock Mines. With the introduction of these
improvements, the era of large-scale logging began in
the Tahoe Basin. |
|
|
|
|
| By 1881, Glenbrook
was the largest lumber manufacturing town in Nevada, with
production exceeding 20 million board feet a year and
with a population well in excess of one thousand. |
|
|
|
|
| Its amenities included
four hotels... |
|
|
|
|
| ...two saloons,
a post office and several general stores. |
|
|
|
|
| During the next
two decades, timber was harvested from nearly every accessible
area of the Lake and hauled to Glenbrook by tugboat for
milling. Only a few thousand acres were left untouched
by the end of the 1890's. With the depletion of timber
and the decrease in demand for lumber by Virginia City
as mine production waned, the direction of Glenbrook's
future changed. |
|
|
|
|
| In 1896, Duane
Bliss, the principal architect of Tahoe's development,
launched a new era with the christening of his new passengership,
the S. S. Tahoe. Within a short time, this once little-known
logging lake became the foremost mountain resort in the
western United States. |
|
|
|
|
| In 1906, the Glenbrook
Inn opened its doors to accommodate this new tourist trade.
The Inn itself was composed of two former hotels, the
Lakeshore House and Jellerson House, together with new
construction and parts of an old general store. Most of
the guests of the Inn arrived via steamer from Tahoe City,
California, after a short journey from the Southern Pacific
Railway station at Truckee to the Tahoe Tavern by train. |
|
|
|
|
| From 1906 until
1975, Glenbrook was an exclusive summer resort for people
from all over the United States. |
|
|
|
|
| A few historic
buildings... |
|
|
|
|
| ...and hundreds
of old harbor pilings are all that remain of a once robust
and vital Nevada lumber town. |
|
