Lake Tahoe Map Art

Lake Tahoe sits high in the Sierra Nevada and straddles the line between California and Nevada. At 6,225 feet above sea level it is the largest alpine lake in North America, and its depth of 1,645 feet makes it the second deepest lake in the country after Crater Lake. On a map the whole basin reads at once: the long blue oval, Emerald Bay tucked into the southwest shore, Tahoe City where the Truckee River leaves the lake, and the casinos and beaches of South Lake Tahoe at the bottom. Most of the watershed is national forest, so the shoreline towns stand out against wide green space. It is a place families come back to for decades, in ski season and in summer.