As Glen Alpine Springs Resort grew, he added more cabins and developed nature trails into the wilderness to entice visitors. Gilmore marketed his property as a health resort, encouraging visitors to imbibe the sparkling soda water that bubbles up to the surface as an elixir.
Glen Alpine Springs founder Nathan Gilmore encouraged visitors to drink the water from this mineral spring, which he marketed as an elixir, photo by Jaime Lyn Pirozzi, courtesy Local Freshies LLC/ Upon her death in 1880, Gilmore named the resort Glen Alpine. The name Glen Alpine Springs was inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s lengthy 1810 poem The Lady of the Lake, which was a favorite of Gilmore’s wife, Amanda Gray Gilmore, according to legend. In 1871 Gilmore filed a homestead deed for 10,000 acres of land that extended from near Fallen Leaf Lake into the heart of what was then known as Devil’s Basin (now Desolation Wilderness) and began developing the resort.
#FALLEN LEAF CABIN DRIVERS#
“Convinced by his first taste that the water was both fresh and palatable, Nathan Gilmore and his drivers returned to the shore of Fallen Leaf to move his family and their camp up canyon to the springs.” “To his surprise, he saw that they had been drinking at a mineral spring bubbling from the rocks,” writes E.B. One morning while following some errant cattle, Gilmore discovered them at the mineral spring. They started with 74 head but lost 20 on the treacherous journey. One historian says it took Gilmore and his family six days to bring his herd of cattle from the valley over what would become Echo Summit to the lush meadows around Fallen Leaf Lake. He panned for gold, opened a store and was running a small cattle operation in 1863 when he discovered the soda spring, which would later become the centerpiece of the resort. Gilmore came to California from Ohio in 1850. Glen Alpine Springs tent cabins nestled unde r towering pines ae pictured in 1915, courtesy photo Gilmore Comes for Gold Five of the nine buildings on the property today were designed in the 1920s by Maybeck, a frequent visitor who was chosen after a fire destroyed several buildings on the property in 1921. Several fascinating buildings at the resort that still stand were designed by Bernard Maybeck, considered one of the top architects in American history.Īt its height in the early 1900s, the Glen Alpine Springs resort consisted of 25 buildings, including a 16-room hotel. The resort’s founder, Nathan Gilmore, was a true visionary whose legacy includes the creation of the trails and the gifting of the land that became Desolation Wilderness. Beyond, the trail reaches a small well where gently bubbling water rises up below a sign marked “Soda Spring.” Next to the spring sits a charming old building made of rock, glass and metal, once the assembly hall for the sprawling Glen Alpine Springs resort established in 1878. Glen Alpine Springs is a surreal trip back into Tahoe’s early tourism and ranching history, and a fascinating look into the lives of the Tahoe visionaries who shaped this important corner of the lake.īeginning near Fallen Leaf Lake, the Glen Alpine Trail passes several old cabins on a gravel road before reaching a sturdy barn built in 1889. But along one of the most popular trails into the wilderness, they stumble upon an unexpectedly rich part of Tahoe’s history-a bubbling spring and a group of buildings designed by one of the nation’s preeminent architects. Built in 1889, this barn at Glen Alpine Springs is still in good condition and houses tools, horse stalls and a hay loft, photo by Martin GolleryĮach summer, thousands of eager hikers flock to Desolation Wilderness, focused on reaching the area’s sparkling lakes and granite peaks.
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