In Tahoe City, a little town in north Lake Tahoe, we visited the Gatekeeper’s Museum and Indian Basket Museum. We stopped here on our audio tour on a previous day, but it was closed. It was worth coming back to visit.

The Gatekeeper’s Museum was once the cabin where the Gatekeeper for the Lake Tahoe Dam resided, whose job it was to regulate the water flow out of the dam. It burned down in 1978 just before it was deeded over to the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society. They reconstructed it completely by hand on the original foundation.

The museum also houses the Marion Steinbach Native American Basket Collection. The basket gallery showcases more than 700 baskets from native peoples of Western North America. The baskets are in very good condition and are works of art.

Another display showcases Navajo Indian rugs.

The rest of the museum preserves and tells the history of the Lake Tahoe area. There are stories of various boats that were used on the lake, artifacts from dog sled operators, and dresses from ladies of the past and more. Upstairs there’s more history and wild tales of the legend of the plug at the bottom of the lake.

The outside of the museum has beautiful grounds that are right on the edge of the lake. Let’s take a walk down to the lake.

Someone (not us) collected all these pine cones and arranged them on the picnic table.

Within sight of the Gatekeeper’s grounds, is the famous Fanny Bridge which is located over the only outlet of Lake Tahoe into the Truckee River.

The bridge has an interesting story on how it got its name. It was so named from all the fannies that can be seen from the road as gawkers stare over the edge of the bridge at the water below. Do you see any fannies?

Here’s a view of what you can see from Fanny Bridge.

If you walk across the bridge, the North Lake Tahoe Visitor Center has a very interesting interactive display. The “Shaping Watersheds” interactive sandbox is a large-scale educational model where visitors can move the sand to build mountains, valleys and other land-forms. An overhead projector casts topographical contour lines and a color-coded elevation map onto the surface. The motion-sensing camera detects changes and the projected lines and colors change to reflect the new topography. It’s even fun for adults. Ask me how I know.

There was another historical cabin in Tahoe City that we did not get to see. It’s nice to have reasons to come back. This is one area I could visit over and over again.