It’s commonly known that Incline Village was named after the incline railway built by the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Company. The steam powered cable railway, with an average grade of 35%, was known as the Crystal Bay Railroad. Canted cable cars full of lumber and cordwood were pulled 1,400 feet up by gigantic bull wheels. The wood was then transferred to a gravity flume for the trip down the mountain towards Carson City, and its final destination, the Comstock Lode. How many current Incline Village residents have noticed the Nevada Historical Marker No. 246 marking the spot along Highway 28?
The original Incline Village was built on Incline Creek in 1882. By 1884, the thriving community even had its own post office. The original town wasn’t particularly long lived, though. Tahoe’s last major logging season was in 1894, and after that, the railway was dismantled. The town then disappeared, as had most of the timber in the Tahoe Basin.
The amount of wood removed from the Sierras is almost unimaginable. It’s estimated that by 1881, more than two billion board-feet of lumber had been removed from the Lake Tahoe area. Over a 20 year period, the Comstock Lode alone used 600 million board feet of lumber for square-set timbering, its unique mine framing system, and also used 2 million cords of firewood for running the steam engines in the mines and mills.