Gatekeeper's Museum

The small log museum sits at the lake outlet right beside the Fanny Bridge. It covers the early days of Tahoe — the loggers, dam keepers, and tourist resorts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries — and houses the outstanding Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum, with hundreds of Washoe, Maidu, and Pomo baskets.

The Washoe people summered around Lake Tahoe for thousands of years before being pushed out by 19th-century settlers. The collection is one of the best of its kind in the West and worth a deliberate visit, not just a passing look.

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The original gatekeeper's cabin stood here from 1910 until 1978, when an arsonist burned it down. The current log building is a careful reconstruction; the Marion Steinbach Indian Basket Museum inside holds over 800 baskets from more than 85 tribes, much of it gathered by Steinbach herself over decades of trading and travelling in the West.

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