CROWDS AT MY FAVORITE LAKESIDE RESORT

Once upon a time – luckily in ‘my’ day – there was a marvelous lakeside resort on the western shore of Lake Tahoe called “Meeks Bay”.  It’s still there, but it’s nothing like it used to be!  

It had a wonderful old lodge with a newspaper & magazine stand with cards & postcards, a gift, souvenir, & native jewelry dept., men’s, women’s & children’s resort clothing, a back room with wicker writing desks under every window for writing out postcards, and a TV in one corner surrounded by soft-cushioned wicker chairs & sofas.  In an extended section there was a beauty parlor and the post office.  Upstairs were offices & living quarters.  Unfortunately, the grand old lodge burned down in a suspicious arson fire in 1978.

My brother heads for the beach past the old lodge in 1962.

The extended addition to the main lodge with the beauty shop and post office.  There’s no line at the post office, so the mail must not have come in yet.

The resort also boasted a pier, a barber shop, a grocery store, a two-story men's dormitory, a bingo parlor, a dance hall, a lakeside restaurant, a snack bar, beachfront cabins, a 400-seat theater, and a cafe – most gone now, either damaged by heavy snow or demolished when it was determined they were not worth saving by the new owner of the property.  There were stables for horseback riding, and across Meeks Creek, a campground with bathrooms, showers, & a laundry (by hand in tubs) room with ironing boards & irons because back then girls going to the dance at night had to wear dresses and it’s hard to keep dresses wrinkle-free when you’re camping!  That’s also when we used to wear all those crinolines underneath our skirts.  A nifty way to transport those was to roll them up & stuff them into an old nylon stocking. J

Out on the highway was the Meeks Bay Theater and next to it, the Fountain Café where one could get the best hamburgers, fries, milkshakes, & apple pie!  The building housing the theater and cafe was said to have collapsed from a heavy snow load in the late 1970s, but that explanation was highly questioned owing to someone having seen large machinery pushing the building off its foundation before it collapsed.  Hmmm?  The way everything else was disappearing has to make one wonder?

Meeks Bay beach is a long crescent with soft white sand.  The high roofed building there on the beach was the dance hall with a beautiful polished oak floor.  Next to it was the lakeside restaurant, and there were beachfront cabins to the north and south of the dancehall & restaurant.  Eventually, in the 1950s, there was also a snack bar built next to the dance hall where one could get soda pop & ice cream.  (It's currently a place where one can order hamburgers & fries, etc.)  Just north of the dance hall there was a pier that stretched out into the lake.  At night it was lit up which made for romantic strolls and there were benches all along where folks could sit and enjoy the view of the lake at night while listening to the water slap gently against the pier pilings.

My Dad sitting on the pier in the 1930s.  Looks like the benches hadn’t been added yet.

Eventually the pier needed to be updated and in the 1950s a boathouse was added.

Here’s me paddling a rental kayak with the pier & boathouse behind me in 1959.

On the north side of the pier there were beachfront cabins to reserve . . .

. . . and, apparently, rowboats to rent.  These two pictures were taken some time in the 1930s.

The cabins were still there when we were there in 1952.  The kayak to the left was being paddled by my brother.  The one on the right, by one of my younger sisters, and that’s me in the white bathing cap hanging on & kicking behind my sis’s kayak.

Around 1955, however, the cabins were demolished and 3 beachfront motel units were added in their place.  Those are the rental kayaks sitting on the beach.  The kayaks were numbered and I remember the person who was in charge of renting the boats out would, when a rentee’s time was up (we rented them by the hour), call out over a bullhorn the rentee’s boat number saying “Your time is up.  Please return to the pier.” and everyone on the beach would then look around to see who had that boat number and observe whether or not they were returning their boat as they were supposed to.  Silly fun. J

Now we head south down the beach from the other side of the pier in the 1950s past the dance hall and lakeside restaurant on the immediate right with more beachfront cabins & the Meeks Bay boathouse farther on down.  The boathouse was situated on Meeks Creek which flowed into the lake.  In the 1950s the creek was partially dammed to create a marina which operated for many years but was closed not too long ago owing to violations which had not been dealt with properly.

Today the old boathouse is gone, as are all the beachfront cabins.  Unfortunately, the dance hall collapsed under heavy snow in the winter of 1974-75, and the lakeside restaurant burned down some time after that.  Those white canopies way on down there were our family’s the year this picture was taken.  Down where the old boathouse was in the earlier picture, you can see the entrance to the marina.  It was still operating when this picture was taken.

Looking back up the beach from the far end toward the dance hall and pier in the 1950s.

A current view looking back up the beach from the far end except the dance hall and pier no longer exist.  I don’t understand about the pier.  It was still in decent shape when it was torn down?

The beach is still wonderful and the water nice & cold just the way I like it.  But I sorely miss the way it used to be.  The only things left of the original resort are a few cabins up on the hillside overlooking the lake, the 7-bdrm Kehlet Mansion, and the snack bar.  A “Visitor’s Center” was built to replace the old lodge, but it’s nowhere near the same.

The 7-bdrm Kehlet Mansion rents for $7,000. a week.

The new ‘Visitors Center’.  Bah humbug.

In no way can it compare to the wonderful old lodge!

Still and all, I continue to go to Meeks Bay because if I sit on the beach and look out over that beautiful lake without glancing back over my shoulder, I can pretend it’s still the same old place it used to be – once upon a time in ‘my’ day. J

:-> 

La Nightingail