How deep is Lake Tahoe?
Lake levels and depth vary only slightly today. The deepest recorded depth of Lake Tahoe is 1,645 feet. To visualize this depth, imagine the bottom of Tahoe reaching down 100 feet lower than Carson City, Nevada, sitting in the basin far below Tahoe to the east. What we see as “normal” Lake Tahoe depth is only our perspective. Over its history, the lake level has been much lower or much higher than today. We can see clear evidence of lower lake levels in the past lasting hundreds of years. Many locations around the lake have submerged mature tree stumps twenty feet below current lake levels. By examining and dating the tree rings of these underwater stumps, we can see that shoreline forests have repeatedly been drowned by ups and downs in the historic lake levels of Tahoe.
