Nevada: Tahoe Tessie & Bigfoot

This week, the Backwoods Cryptid Road Trip crosses Spooner Summit and drops down to the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe, the second-deepest lake in the United States, to investigate one of the West’s most enduring lake monster legends: Tahoe Tessie.For generations, people have reported seeing long, dark shapes moving through Tahoe’s famously cold, deep water.

We look at the geography of the lake, its extreme depth, and the conditions that have helped fuel stories of something large living below the surface.

Along the way, we examine recorded Washoe traditions connected to Cave Rock, the 1897 newspaper account attributed to I. C. Coggin, and the surge of reports during the 1980s involving Reno police officers, hikers, an optician, and a local television station owner.

We also dig into the University of California, Davis seminar that considered whether an unusually large sturgeon could explain some of the sightings, and separate fact from one of Tahoe Tessie’s most repeated legends: the supposed Jacques Cousteau expedition that never actually happened.Then the stories move from the archives to the water itself.

Listeners describe seeing a long shape passing beneath the clear water near Sand Harbor, feeling something massive roll beneath them while diving along the wall at Cave Rock, watching three distinct humps move across the north end of the lake against the chop, and having something large surface alongside a boat during a nighttime mackinaw fishing trip off Crystal Bay.

From Lake Tahoe, the road climbs into the Carson Range and continues east toward the Ruby Mountains for five Nevada Bigfoot encounters. The reports take us to Marlette Lake, the Mount Rose Highway during a storm, the aspen groves near Spooner Summit, a roadside pullout on Kingsbury Grade, and a remote talus slope above Lamoille Canyon.

If you’ve had a cryptid encounter, strange sighting, or unexplained experience you’d like to share for a future episode, send it to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com.

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