Brutal Winter of 1952 Part IV

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BY MARK MCLAUGHLIN

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Overwhelming snowfall during January 1952 crushed the life out of the Tahoe Sierra. Thousands of residents, skiers and travelers were stranded at resorts, maintenance stations and in snowbound communities. Virtually all primary and secondary mountain roads were impassable and manned roadblocks stopped all but emergency vehicles from traveling. Cross-country skiers were warned to watch out for high voltage power lines buried by the deep snow. Central Sierra Snow Lab had picked up more than 31 feet so far and the snowpack was more than 14 feet deep on Donner Pass, a new record for so early in the season. By the end of January, Truckee residents had shoveled nearly 23 feet of snow. The local high school was closed for 15 days that month.

Highway 89 along the Truckee River was shut down for a week, isolating Tahoe City and North Shore communities where there was a shortage of fresh milk, eggs and butter. Residents in need of heating oil tapped tanks at unoccupied homes. In early February, a break in the weather allowed a plane to fly in with repair parts for Placer County’s two rotary plows that had been working to clear the main highways on the North and West shores of Lake Tahoe. Both plows had broken down; the Tahoe City machine needed a new transmission and the Kings Beach plow a rear axle. The transmission was dropped over Tahoe City Golf Course, but despite being rigged with a parachute, the 800-pound box hit the snow “like a bullet.” On its recovery it was discovered that they had received the axle by mistake. At Kings Beach, men waiting for the drop couldn’t find the crate until they discovered a large depression in the snow on the roof a nearby residence. They shoveled the roof, repaired the damage and recovered the transmission from the living room below. After the delivery error was radioed in, a follow-up air drop rectified the situation and soon both plows were back in operation. A family of five caretaking Vikingsholm Castle at Emerald Bay was cut off from supplies for 20 days. They called the Coast Guard to bring in emergency provisions by boat, but the picturesque bay had frozen solid for the first time in 35 years. It took an auxiliary crew aboard a cutter eight hours to break ice in the bay so they could deliver food. Like our contemporary Caltrans crews, resolute highway crews slowly won back the roads. On Tahoe’s North Shore progress was held to about one city block per day due to fallen trees embedded in the snowpack. Tahoe City was re-connected to Truckee on Feb. 18. Worried about the snowbound hamlet of Homewood, Constable Harry Johanson delivered 1,400 pounds of food via Sno-Cat. Shortly after Officer Johanson reached the West Shore community, another powerful storm rolled in.

Donner Summit was pounded with an additional 7 feet of snow in eight days and the snowpack exceeded 18 feet. Highway 40 over the Sierra was shut down again. By Feb. 21, downtown Truckee had picked up 27 feet and counting. Drifts 20 feet deep buried roads in Tahoe City isolating the community again. Some residents were using their second-floor windows as the front door. It was even worse in the small town of Calpine north of Truckee, which had been snowbound for weeks and without electricity since Jan. 11. Due to the lack of power and 8 feet of snow on the ground, the local elementary school was closed for a month and a half. March roared in like a lion with another 13 feet of snow measured at the snow lab. Precipitation that month was double normal, with the Soda Springs snowpack peaking at more than 22 feet deep. It was getting harder to accurately measure the depth since the snow stake was only 200 inches (16.7 feet) tall. At Eureka Bowl near Quincy, the snowpack stood at 23 feet and contained a drought-busting 110 inches of water.

Extreme snowfall also hit the southern Sierra Nevada. On March 14, 15 employees at the California State Highway Maintenance Station at Crestview in Mono County reported an unofficial

Record summer snowpack on Mt. Rose Highway. | Courtesy North Lake Tahoe Historical Society

snowfall tally of 84 inches in just 24 hours. (California’s current 24-hour snowfall record is 67 inches measured at Echo Summit in January 1982.) Near Bishop, 33 people were rescued after an avalanche destroyed their mining camp. The group had spent two days huddled in a concrete basement fearing to leave. The snow slide hit so quickly it separated an infant from its mother and buried the child under 15 feet of snow. “I was outside the mill when the avalanche struck. I looked around and saw a wall of snow roaring down from the canyon walls. The houses seemed to explode. I started running toward my home, almost crazy because I was sure my wife and baby were killed,” recalled Thomas Holmes. After he found his wife injured but alive, she pointed to a wall of snow and said, “Our baby Michael is under that.” Holmes and some friends frantically dug into the snow pile for two hours before finding the toddler alive. Amazingly, the child was fine. Holmes later said, “Michael was wedged between the family’s two small dachshund dogs. All were alive and uninjured. I am sure we owe our baby’s life to our dogs. They must have crept as closely as possible to him to protect him and keep him warm.”

With roads closed at Kings Beach, Nurse Audrey Welch had to shoulder a backpack of medical supplies and struggle through fresh powder up to her neck to care for pregnant women on both sides of the state line. Snow depths throughout the region were virtually unprecedented. Tahoe City was reporting 12 feet; the west end of Donner Lake nearly 17 feet; Echo Summit 23.5 feet; and the greatest of them all, a solid 26 feet of snow at Soda Springs. The winter of 1952 boasts a seemingly endless list of weather superlatives, including the deepest snowpack of 26 feet at Donner Pass and its second greatest annual snowfall of record with nearly 68 feet. Vital Highway 40 was blocked for 28 consecutive days, plus many additional days with temporary closures.

Some blamed the exceptional snowfall on the December 1951 eruption of the Hibok-Hibok volcano in the Philippines that had blasted tons of ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s impossible to say whether all that particulate matter contributed to the incredible amount of snow that buried the Tahoe Sierra that winter, but to stranded residents the endless powder certainly seemed like an avalanche of white ash.

Read Parts I-III at

This article is an excerpt from McLaughlin’s book, “Snowbound: Legendary Winters of the Tahoe Sierra.”n

Tahoe historian Mark McLaughlin is a nationally published author and professional speaker. His award-winning books are available at local stores or at thestormking. com. You may reach him at mark@ thestormking.com.