Steinbeck in Tahoe
by Tim Hauserman
Several famous American writers have lived in the Sierra at some point during their careers. In 1925, John Steinbeck—though not yet famous—joined their ranks. After spending six years at Stanford University studying to be a writer (but failing to graduate), Steinbeck moved to Lake Tahoe. The future Nobel Laureate for Literature took a summer job at Fallen Leaf Lake Resort on Tahoe's South Shore, as a brief respite prior to launching his writing career. Instead, Steinbeck spent much of the next four years at Tahoe working, sometimes sparingly, on his writing and a string of part-time jobs.
By the end of his time at The Lake, Steinbeck had finished his first novel and met his first wife. Soon thereafter he entered the most productive period of his career, penning the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath and a long line of classics including Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat and East of Eden. But in that summer of '25, Steinbeck was a handyman and shuttle driver at Fallen Leaf Lake.
Once a week he drove a 16-cylinder Pierce Arrow down to the dock at Tallac, near present-day Camp Richardson, to meet the steamer carrying mail and resort guests. Fallen Leaf was one of few scattered resorts surrounding the sparsely populated Tahoe of the 1920s. Yet the scene was lively for a young man, the hotels catering to well-to-do families, whose daughters flocked to dance pavilions like the one built over the water's edge at the Emerald Bay Resort.
Early in 1926, Steinbeck left The Lake and headed for New York, where he hoped his desire to become a published writer would finally come to fruition. Instead, he returned to Fallen Leaf Lake, broke and in need of employment.
That summer, Steinbeck met Alice Brigham, who offered him a job as caretaker, handyman and chauffeur at her Cascade Lake estate, the summer home of Brigham and her two daughters' families (the Ebrights and Kemps). Steinbeck initially loved his time in this isolated paradise. The Brigham home included a beautiful library that Steinbeck used extensively as a resource for his writing.
All he had ever wanted to do was to be a writer, and Steinbeck's letters from Tahoe speak of his frustration with his failure to get anything published. And while he hoped that his escape to Tahoe would help him write, Steinbeck complained that the relaxed atmosphere and the beauty of the surroundings made it difficult. Whether because of his chores at the estate, or swimming and sunbathing, he found it easy to be distracted.
In the fall of 1926, Brigham and her daughters headed back to San Francisco and Steinbeck settled in for a winter of seclusion. At the time, Tahoe was a summer resort and only a few crusty souls dared stay for the snowy months. Mail was the only communication with the outside world in winter, and whether by ski, snowshoe or sled, whenever Steinbeck heard the S.S. Nevada blowing its whistle, he hightailed it the two miles to Camp Richardson.
Steinbeck had two primary winter chores: hand sawing huge blocks of ice from the frozen Lake and dragging them to the icehouse where they would sit all summer under cover of sawdust, and splitting firewood for the coming spring and summer.
Winter passed uneventfully, and during the summer of 1927 at the Brigham estate, Steinbeck took on the additional task of tutoring the two Ebright boys and their cousin, Catherine Kemp. He hiked with the families into Desolation Wilderness for picnics or sunned with them on the beach. His motivation to write continued to be challenged.
When the families left again in the fall, Steinbeck began a long, lonely winter at the estate. In the spring of '28 he wrote, "I was snowed in eight months of the year." It became obvious to Steinbeck that the isolation of the Brigham estate was not his cup of tea.
In the summer of 1928 he moved north when a friend, Lloyd Shebley, found him a job at the bustling Tahoe City Fish Hatchery (the enormous cedar-bark-covered building still standing at the intersection of the west end of Lake Forest Road and North Lake Blvd.) Steinbeck was not a model employee, spending more effort on writing than on feeding fish or leading tours of the hatchery. He did find time, however, to experiment with constructing prophylactics out of fish skins.
In fact, Steinbeck and Shebley were frequently distracted from their work by skirt-chasing. One attempt to meet ladies at the Emerald Bay pavilion ended poorly when the two could not get their old car back up the steep road to the highway.
But love would soon walk right through the front door for Steinbeck. When the young, captivating Henning sisters from San Francisco came into the hatchery one day for a tour, Steinbeck was instantly attracted to Carol. By the end of the tour, he and Shebley had a double date for the evening. The bachelors were late to pick up the sisters, however, when their car suffered three flat tires on the short trip to the girls' home in McKinney. Things definitely picked up from there; the future Mr. and Mrs. Steinbeck enjoyed ten wild days together, exploring the best of Tahoe City's and Truckee's prohibition-era speakeasies.
When Carol left, Steinbeck was forlorn and again frustrated with the lack of progress in his writing. He began thinking about leaving Tahoe to return to his native Salinas. His fate was sealed when his boss at the fish hatchery found him shooting holes in the ceiling of his cabin. He was lying in his bunk bed with a bottle of gin in one hand and a gun in the other. By the first of September, Steinbeck's time at The Lake had ended.
During his four years at Tahoe, Steinbeck completed his first book, Cup of Gold, a tale about Henry Morgan from Jamaica. He spent many years finding a publisher; the book is considered by most critics to be one of his worst novels.
Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains do not play a role in Steinbeck's later writings, yet it seems inconceivable that his time at The Lake did not have an effect on him as a writer and a person. Twenty years later, he said, "I was never more healthy in my life than [during] the winters I spent at Tahoe."
Whether fueled by his Tahoe time or not, Steinbeck's return to Salinas marked the beginning of his most prolific period. By the end of the 1930s he had completed three of his most famous novels: The Grapes of Wrath, In Dubious Battle and Of Mice and Men. Some admirers of these books comment on Steinbeck's wonderful description of the natural environment, perhaps a tool honed by his years at Tahoe.