The question of who owned Commons Beach was finally, and drastically, resolved one October night in 1937.
There’s an anonymously written poem from the 1700s that could sum up Pat Dillon’s article for Moonshine Ink about Tahoe City: “The law locks up the man or woman/Who steals the goose off the common/But leaves the greater villain loose/Who steals the common from the goose.”
Dillon’s subject is the beach at Tahoe City, today “a haven for visitors and locals alike.” In the 1800s, this pleasant shore was deeded by the feds to the locals, who called the area “Commons Beach.” The village of “Tahoe,” later Tahoe City, was the base for a lumber magnate named Duane Bliss. He built a hotel and a narrow gauge railroad from Truckee to bring in visitors, after the logging and the silver mining was played out. The automobile displaced trains as the best way to see the incomparable lake, leaving behind train tracks, fenced-off buildings and private cops with billy clubs preventing access to the water.
Locals filed lawsuits, charging that public property had been privatized. These cases languished in the courts during the 1920s. The matter of who owned the beach was finally resolved one October night in 1937, in a manner that was drastic, mysterious, and—Dillon suggests—perhaps instructive.
Read more at MoonshineInk.com: “When the Commons Was Removed From Commons Beach”
