Originally published in the Tahoe Daily Tribune on 12/28/22. Written by Staff Report.

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Incline Village Middle School has been named a state finalist for the 13th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition. The school is among 300 other public schools across America that have been named finalists in the competition, and represent over 1,000 entrants from across the state.

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Originally published in the Tahoe Daily Tribune on 1/3/23. Submitted to the Tribune.

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – The Nevada Department of Transportation on Monday announced the winning names for their inaugural Name-A-Snowplow contest.

The winning snowplow names, representing the three regions of Nevada, are . . .

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Originally published in the Tahoe Daily Tribune on 12/30/22. Written by Miranda Jacobson.

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Tunnel Creek Cafe in Incline VIllage is offering a new dinner menu on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays all winter long.

The new seasonal menu features a variety of options including popular items like the quesabirria tacos and pork belly ramen, and owners Evan Roa and Chad Burns couldn’t be more excited to share with the community.

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Thank you for Entering!

You have officially been entered to win. One winner will be randomly selected on Monday 3/6/23 to receive a free one-time snow removal service (with a a value of up to $75) from 5-Star Snow Removal.

Aunt Hazel asked me when I was two years old, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Honey?”

Without a moment’s hesitation I answered, “When I grow up I’m going to be a snowplow driver.” There was never any doubt in my mind that I would become king of all snowplow drivers, and there would be a statue of my snowplow at the roundabout in the Village of Incline. Tourists from the world over would arrive, eager to take pictures of my snowplow to show back home in Mumbai and Shanghai. What I wanted out of life was to push snow around during the day and have hot chocolate at night before bed. 

The closest I got to that dream was about 35 years ago, when I was asked by a neighbor if I would be so kind as to shovel their roof following a heavy snowfall, which I was just young enough to do. They had some visitors from Los Angeles at the time, and one of them was in the shower when I grabbed my star-crossed snow shovel.

My wife stopped me as I was leaving for my task and suggested, “Honey, why don’t you spray your snow shovel with Pam, so the snow won’t stick to your shovel.” I had no idea what Pam was, but she always had good ideas, so I sprayed my shovel with some slippery non-sticking cooking oil and climbed up the ladder to our neighbor’s roof.

Once situated atop the roof, I wiggled my boots into the snow to get some footing, flexed my muscles, filled my shovel with a hefty load of snow, and let it fly, and fly it did! That load of Sierra Cement came off my shovel like a load of gravel, shot across the alleyway separating our condos, and imploded the bathroom window, showering a visitor from LA with snow and shards of glass. He stuck his head out the suddenly empty window and I shouted down to him, “Are you alright?!”

In a state of shock, he looked up and shouted, (I’ll clean this up for this fine family journal), “Jimminy-Crickets! I thought it was a drive-by!” 

As good fortune would have it, he was not hurt, and recovered fully after a straight shot of whiskey.

It cost me $75 to have the window replaced, and I made $50 for shoveling the roof, so my professional roof-shoveling days were a bust. More importantly, my dream of becoming a snowplow driver was out the window so to speak. 

Is there a moral to this story? Yes. If you have a wife like I did, who always has good ideas, and she tells you to put Pam on your snow shovel, go and get yourself a gun owner license before Paming your snow shovel. Then handle that snow shovel like you might handle a 60mm mortar…

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Written by rich

Once Art Wood’s team of Oklahoma investors had secured the purchase of some 9,000 acres of mostly second growth forest land on the northern shores of Lake Tahoe from George Whittell in 1959, nothing more determined the look and feel of the community they planned to create than the efforts of one Raymond M. Smith. Smith’s name and accomplishments are often lost in accounts of the history of Incline Village but Raymond is pretty much responsible for creating the actual design of the community we now call home.

Born in San Francisco in 1923, only child Raymond graduated from Lowell High School and then enrolled in nearby Stanford University. When WWII changed everybody’s plans he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and then served as a B-24 bombardier on the Italian front beginning in 1944. After the war Lt. Smith returned to Stanford to complete his BA degree and then continued his education at Harvard University where he was in the first class to earn a masters degree in city planning in 1949. Smith became Nevada’s first professionally trained city planner and in1960 left his position heading Washoe County’s planning department to accept Art Woods’ offer to lay out the plans for the new town Crystal Bay Development Company was about to build which Wood suggested would become “the Pebble Beach” of Lake Tahoe.

What follows is an introduction to Raymond Smith’s vision of what the town he first suggested be named “Incline Village”—emphasis on the Village part—for locals nearby had long referred to the area as “Incline” as one might casually refer to other areas around the Lake as “South Shore” or “Spooner.” The map spread across this page and the next is what is believed to be Smith’s final first plan for Incline Village. It was probably finished in late 1960 or early1961 and the original draft from which this is copied contained on the upper left hand corner a grid which called out the planned section quadrants which are not relevant here. What this author hopes readers will find of most interest in viewing this map is to realize that Smith’s plan—reflecting Wood’s et all vision for Incline Village—is remarkably consistent in many respects with what we see about us today. In other critical regards it differs considerably from what was originally drawn.

In interviewing two of Raymond’s surviving sons for the article, Gage Smith, who still lives in the Minden/Gardnerville area for part of the year near his brother Cole, said that one of the first things you need to understand about Raymond’s plans “was that he hated straight lines.” Raymond also had an abiding respect for the land, and his designs always attempted to reflect what Mother Nature had done with the surface of the earth. In fact starting at a very early time in his career in Nevada, Raymond spent much of his free time traveling to every corner of Nevada and nearby states exploring old ghost towns and defunct mining operations and documenting them with amazingly accomplished drawings and water color paintings. Smith wrote about these journeys in a dozen books—many still available on line. His boys accompanied him on many of these trips, and those stories are fascinating reads but for another time. Before putting pencil to drafting paper Raymond walked almost every square yard of Incline and the mountain sides around it, and spent hours talking with Art Wood and partner Harold Tiller to identify all the elements of the community they proposed to create, and then he went to work,

The original offices of the Crystal Bay Development Company were on the lower floors of Eugene’s Crystal Bay Chalet, a trendy restaurant off the lake side of highway 28 going up the hill into Crystal Bay. Raymond’s office and drafting tables were in that office and unfortunately for historians trying to document those early days, the restaurant and CBDC offices were destroyed in a “suspicious” fire on New Year’s Eve,1960. But by that time the layout and plans for the new community were well along and Raymond continued his work from the (ironically) Swiss Chalet style home he had built for his family on Shoreline Circle while CBDC found new digs. Raymond Smith completed his work in 1963 and although the family continued to live in Incline Village where his sons attended area schools, he himself opened a consulting business in Reno and commuted over the newly reconstructed Mount Rose Highway until the family moved to Reno in 1964. The Smiths moved back again to Incline in 1968 where son Cole was a member of the new Incline Village High School’s first graduating class.

So let us now consider several key aspects of Raymond Smith’s original plan for Incline Village.

First, please note that the plan shows only a small portion of the shoreline along Lake Tahoe to be available for development. This is because a good portion of that land had already been sold by George Whittell and although it was later included in the jurisdiction of the Incline Village General Improvement District, it was not included in the land which CBDC had purchased.

Second, Lakeshore Blvd. which was the original path of traffic through the area was to be bypassed by a new road called on the map “Central Parkway.” The junction between that new road and the “New Mount Rose State Hwy. No. 27” was planned to “T” into Lakeshore Drive near where the exact opposite now happens—Lakeshore T’s into SR 28 as the Central Parkway has since been numbered.

Third, the “Old Mount Rose Road” (SR 431) which left Country Club Drive just east of the Central Parkway (now route 28) was planned to parallel the new alignment of SR 431 along the latter and above a new neighborhood development labeled Chateau Acres where the lot sizes were to be much larger and more expensive than many of the other lots platted down below. According to Paul Franklin, a local builder who was a contemporary of the Smith family back in the day, Chateau Acres was one of the first subdivisions to be developed in Incline even though it was farthest from the lake. Paul remembers that the other neighborhoods that were first developed by CBDC in addition to Chateau Acres were Ponderosa (where the Tiller family built), Woodridge, Lakeview (where the Wood and Smith families built), and Millcreek.

Fourth, although the map does not show utilities, they were a major consideration and all electrical and phone service was to be above ground except for Shoreline Circle which was planned as one of the most prestigious neighborhoods and those utilities placed underground from the start. All waste disposal (sewers) were initially via septic systems and that fact determined lot sizes initially. Later, Village sewers had to be underground and a treatment plant built to comply with increasingly strict regulations promulgated by the TRPA starting in the late 1960’s. This was a massive project and part of the reason CBCD sold to Boise Cascade in 1968.

Fifth and very critical, the center of activity for the new town was planned to be arranged around a yacht harbor to be built where the Village Green now sits and surrounded by half a dozen large hotels, hotel casinos and motel complexes. The area was to house a park which would stretch from the Central Parkway all the way down to the yacht harbor and would also include an upscale shopping center with a north/south boulevard punctuated by traffic circles crossing the area between the Mill Creek Estates and a commercial area at the junction of Village Blvd and the Central Parkway.

Sixth, a High School was to be located exactly where it was subsequently constructed. The first golf course and “Country Club” were also located where subsequently built. Two “Community Beaches” were located where Ski and Burnt Cedar beaches exist today.

Seventh, a large shopping center was to be situated in the whole area where the Raleys supermarket stands today using only a small part of what was originally envisioned. Several other school sites were specified as was as a hospital to be built in what is now the residential area at the start of the Old Mount Rose Road just above Country Club Drive.

Lastly, at least for this overview, half a dozen areas were designated “Multiple” for apartment and condominium construction for what one might well imagine was later to be called “workforce housing” with one such area even bordering the lake on the way to Crystal Bay. None of the current town above Mount Rose Highway (now Tyner Road, etc.) was proposed in the original plan except for the aforementioned Ponderosa and Woodridge Subdivisions close to present SR 28.

So please now consider the original vision Raymond Smith and his colleagues had for our community and ponder how things evolved for better or worse over the next sixty years.

Originally published in the Tahoe Daily Tribune on 12/23/22. View the original article here.

Written by Morgan Steel. Photos provided by Tahoe Rim Trail Association.

Fortunately, the sun rises early in the summer. At the Tahoe Rim Trail Association, we soak it up and maximize each precious moment of sunny smoke-free skies.

Our early mornings are a burst of activity. At the office, tools are loaded and coolers of drinks are prepped as the work truck heads off to one of several weekly workdays to meet enthusiastic volunteers ready to dig into maintaining the Tahoe Rim Trail’s 200-mile system.

Downstairs at our gear storage, our dedicated youth programs instructors are wrangling the newest crop of preteens, ready to turn in their phones for backpacks. They’ll spend the next four days exploring Tahoe’s trails on their Youth Backcountry Camp.

West of our office out in Desolation Wilderness, our backcountry trail crew of staff and volunteers are packing up camp for the day and preparing to head towards Phipps Creek to finish a tread maintenance project. Sixty some trail miles away, our intrepid guided Thru Hike turns south from Mt. Rose on the tail end of their 15-day journey around the TRT.

To cap off this busy day, our Taskforce Trailhead crew is setting up shop at Van Sickle Bi-State Park to spend the morning greeting trail users and providing trail information and essential tips on trail etiquette.

As the sun makes its languid journey east to west, TRTA staff, participants, and volunteers make their mark on the trail ensuring a world-class experience for trail users today and in the future and inspiring others to protect this incredible resource in the Tahoe Basin. Summers on the Tahoe Rim Trail are a blur of activity, and 2022 has been another productive year for the Tahoe Rim Trail Association. Specifically, we’ve

• Hosted more than 60 public workdays on the trail
• Cleared over 400 down trees from the trail corridor
• Guided 326 new Tahoe Rim Trail advocates on the trail
• Implemented 20 trailhead outreach events
• Provided backpacking trips to 195 youth, 73% of which were provided on scholarship
• Reopened and repaired sections of trail closed due to recent fires
• Protected essential Peregrine Falcon habitat
• Completed a 1.3-mile reroute of the trail northeast of Tahoe City
• Assessed and maintained over 150 miles of trail
• Planned major trail improvement projects for upcoming seasons,
• Received the incredible support of over 400 volunteers who have provided more than 17,500 hours of service to recreation in the Tahoe Basin.

Morgan Steele is executive director for the Tahoe Rim Trail Association.

Originally published in the Tahoe Daily Tribune on 12/10/22. View the original article here.

Written by Madison Schultz. Photos by Rob Galloway / Tahoe Daily Tribune.

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – The 72 miles that span around Lake Tahoe are a host to quaint mountain towns and endless outdoor recreation options, all lining the icy, crystal blue waters.

Born in the Sierra Nevada mountains and encompassing the “spirit” of Lake Tahoe, 72 Mile Spirits was founded deep in the crystal-clear waters of Lake Tahoe and built on the foundation of Tahoe’s purity and clarity, distilling all their spirits with water sourced solely from Lake Tahoe.

“It was incredibly important to us from the beginning to only distill our products with Lake Tahoe water,” Eric Roe, co-founder of 72 Mile Spirits said. “It makes everything taste cleaner, smoother, and it just made sense when building the foundation of our brand.”

Founded in 2019 by Eric, his wife Brianna Roe, and close family friends Paola and Paul Pruteanu, the group was passionate from the beginning to sacrifice it all to make quality, high-end spirits – and thus, 72 Mile Spirits was born.

“Our goal from the beginning has been to be a brand that is truly authentic to Lake Tahoe, and not just for the name of our company, but who we serve and our mission,” Eric said. “This has always been a passion of mine, we’ve looked at different avenues over the years to try and bring this dream to a reality, and we’re excited it’s finally coming to fruition.”

When initially bringing the dream together, the Roe’s and Preteanu’s wanted to start the business specifically for their signature rye whiskey. Several years in, the distillery utilizes a small batch processing technique, making each blend come out impressively clean and smooth.

“I was never a big fan of rye whiskey, and now that’s arguably the best spirit we have here,” Eric said. “Rye traditionally has a bit more of an earthier flavor, and that was never my thing. The mash and smoking process we do for our rye still provides a distinct rye flavor, but it’s not as pronounced as others on the market.”

Since opening, 72 Mile Spirits has grown their one signature whiskey into four core spirits: Desolation Rye Whiskey, Cascade Blended Bourbon, Clarity Vodka and Backcountry Gin; and two of the four core spirits are made in-house at 72 Mile Spirits’ distillery location in Reno.

“We produce our rye and our Bourbon here and source our gin and vodka from the best of the best out there,” Eric said. “The gin and vodka are produced as a ‘neutral spirit’, then we blend it, proof it, and bottle it here in-house. While the distillation doesn’t take place here it’s still produced by us.”

For the distillery’s rye and Bourbon blends, the process starts in 150-gallon batches with mashing and adding grains to the blends. The mash is then transferred to a fermentation tank, allowing time for the small batch to properly ferment. Then, the batches are distilled by transferring the fermented mash to the pot, where heat is applied. The alcohol is vaporized before the water is collected in the columns of the still, resulting in a truly small-batched spirit.

While the Roe’s and Preteanu’s worked towards bringing 72 Mile Spirits to Lake Tahoe, they harp on the distillery being family owned and operated at its core, and collaboratively work with each other to effectively grow together.

“It’s truly a family business, which makes it fun,” Brianna said. “Whether it be your life partner or business partner, all of us working together has been a great experience. We all have children of our own, but we also consider 72 Mile Spirits our shared baby, too.”

Although the distillery’s physical location is in Reno, both the Roe’s and Preteanu’s live in Incline Village, and are eager about bringing 72 Mile Spirits’ physical location up the mountain so the distillery will be a 100% Lake Tahoe operation.

72 Mile Spirits can be found dominantly in Northern Nevada in bars, restaurants, and grocery stores. According to the distillery’s website, their spirits are currently in 25 locations, but are eager to continue to expand.

“Our goal is to be all around Lake Tahoe and be a premier spirit in the Tahoe Basin,” Eric said. “We’re eager to continue to grow and excited to see what’s in store for us moving forward.”

For more information on 72 Mile Spirits, visit their website.