Nevada Focus: Digging up some Tahoe history

Thursday, Nov. 19, 1998 | 1:46 a.m.

No, Maher doesn't deal in gossip - his specialties are history and archeology. As the assistant forest archeologist for the U.S. Forest Service, Maher and his colleagues have unearthed all manner of artifacts and construction that have helped paint a more complete picture of early life in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

"You'd be surprised at all the things we've found. It's quite an array," Maher says. "Everything from Native American sites to flumes and logging chutes."

Each time the Forest Service starts a forest restoration project at Tahoe, an archeological team first probes the area for anything of historical significance. The project, called the Lake Tahoe Basin Heritage Resources Program, is run in conjunction with the University of Nevada, Reno Archeological Field School.

"We have found several sites associated with the Comstock Era," says Maher, who has unearthed many relics from the region's mid-19th century mining and logging past. "But we've found all kinds of Native American sites also; milling sites, stone tools and the like."

One of the agency's most recent discoveries was a carved aspen tree bearing the names of two early-day Tahoe residents, Frank and B.C. Celio, sons of early Meyers pioneer Carlo Guisepi Celio. The carvings, found on an aspen tree on the Celios' Christmas Valley ranch, date to between 1881 and 1888.

Maher has also found carved calling cards on trees from early Basque sheep herders, who came to the West from Europe and Argentina in the late 1860s.

The Tahoe Basin is also rich in relics from the "Resort Era," a time in the early part of this century when the upper class frolicked at the lake.

Other recent finds include artifacts from Chinese settlements on Lake Tahoe's east shore circa 1870 to 1890.

Among those artifacts, on display at the library in Zephyr Cove, Nev., are bowls and other household items, medicine bottles, tools and coins which were used by Chinese settlers who immigrated to the Tahoe Basin beginning with the Gold Rush in 1849.

Other items include a necklace made of square-holed Chinese coins used as a decoration on clothing and also as protection from ghosts.

"The Chinese came here to help build the railroads, and when the work ran out they began looking for other employment," Maher says. "One thing they did was to cut cord wood, which was used for heating houses and to run (railroad) steam engines. We think that we have found the remains of several Chinese cabins where these people lived."

The diverse array of items can be attributed to the fact that the Chinese tended toward communal living. Because of early laws that prohibited entire families from immigrating, many Chinese settlements in the Sierra were bachelor communities found mainly in logging and mining camps.