A legend still persists, originally fostered by the native Washoe Indians and handed down for centuries, that Tahoe is bottomless. This follows the familiar pattern set for many large fresh water lakes throughout the world. Well, contrary to myth, Lake Tahoe does have a bottom. Many efforts have been made over the years (centuries) to find the absolute deepest spot of the lake.

The maximum depth was determined to be 1,645 feet on July 4, 1875 by C. F. McGlashan of Truckee and Charles Burkhalter of the United States Observatory. Later in 1922 the depth was confirmed by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Finding Tahoe's deepest point that long ago is a marvel in itself - but wait 'till you hear how they measured it. It was probably the least expensive way to do it - and it turned up the correct answer. What these two men did, was tie a fishing line to a leaded champagne bottle and dropped it over the side! What a concept.

As late as August of 1939, though, official maps indicated Tahoe's greatest depth to be only 1,592 feet. And in August of 1880, the Carson Appeal reported "D. L. Bliss, of Glenbrook, ran the nose of his steamer Meteor against a rocky shoreline on the western side of Tahoe (Rubicon Point), dropped a line from the stern and it went 3,000 feet without the bottom being sounded." Now, it's true that directly off Rubicon Point is most likely one of the deepest spots of the lake, official reports have never reported it to be more than 1,200 to 1,300 feet deep. The interesting thing about this is that its that deep within mere yards from the shore!

The actual location of the deepest spot lies about four miles southwest of north Stateline Point and about one mile west of the California-Nevada state line. Incidentally, this places the absolute bottom of Tahoe 92 feet below the capital city of Nevada, Carson City.

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