Pyramid Lake, Nevada: A Visitor’s Guide to facilities and attractions
from The Complete Nevada Traveler
Guide to
Pyramid Lake
Pyramid Lake is not like Lake Tahoe. In addition to
its primitive, challenging beauty, it projects a profound sense of antiquity.
Gazing out across its surface is an experience almost four-dimensional.
Pyramid Lake, Nevada
Calendar of Annual Events
AUGUST
Fishing Contest & Pyramid Lake
Triathalon574-0140
OCTOBER
Pyramid Lake Rodeo,
Nixon574-0140
NOVEMBER
Federation of Fly Fishers,
Derby574-0140
A brief History & Description of
Pyramid Lake, Nevada
by
David W. Toll
The
drive to Pyramid Lake from Reno carries you through a succession of shallow
depressions between low, brush-stubbled hills. It is a pleasant drive,
but long enough to create an awareness of the desert’s monotony. To those
whose tolerance of the desert is low, the half-hour drive may be enough to
permit that monotony to become oppressive. But when the last rise is topped,
the eyesearing expanse of Pyramid Lake stretched out before you is a stunning,
staggering sight: a sheet of electric blue cupped between pastel mountains
of chalky pinks and greys.
John
C. Fremont was the first American to gaze down at Pyramid Lake, and his journal
entry of 10 January 1844 records his impressions of the lake: “. . . we continued
our way up the hollow, intending to see what lay beyond the mountain. The
hollow was several miles long, forming a good pass; the snow deepening to
about a foot as we neared the summit. Beyond, a defile between the mountains
descended rapidly about two thousand feet; and, filling up all the lower
space, was a sheet of green water, some twenty miles broad. It broke upon
our eyes like the ocean.”
Despite
the enormous changes which have overtaken the world since Fremont’s visit
in 1844, Pyramid Lake (which he named for a tufa rock formation on the eastern
shore) remains as strikingly beautiful and as enchanting as it was before
he came.
Pyramid Lake is not like Tahoe. It is shallower, warmer, and
substantially more alkaline than Tahoe, lower in elevation, and not so easily
accessible. But these differences are not the decisive ones. Tahoe is charmingly
beautiful. Pyramid is a shock; in addition to its primitive, challenging
beauty, it projects a profound sense of antiquity. Gazing out across its
surface is an experience almost four-dimensional. To enter the enchanted
realm completely, proceed around the west side of the lake to the distinctive
sawtooth formation at the northwestern corner of the lake: the needles. There
is a hot spring here. Get naked and get in. This is major magic, and an absolute
must for the Complete Nevada Traveler.
Pyramid
is a favorite hunting ground for the fishermen who wade out deep and cast
for trout even in wintry weather. In ancient times this fishery was a magnificent
survival resource, and now it’s a sport. For a while, when the first wave
of white settlers came, it was big business. Commercial fishermen harvested
100 tons of trout between winter 1888 and spring 1889, for shipment all over
the U.S. By 1912 a local entrepreneur was hiring as many as 50 Paiute fishermen
to catch and ship from ten to fifteen tons of trout a week for sale in the
southern Nevada mining camps.
In
1925 a Paiute named Johnny Skimmerhorn caught the world’s record cutthroat
here; a 41-pounder. Photographs taken in the twenties and thirties show
celebrities like Clark Gable struggling manfully to show off a pair of enormous
cutthroat, or a group of Nevadans peeking out from behind a curtain of silvery
fish that stretches eight feet long: a day’s catch. But in the 1940s the
cutthroats were gone. Restocking began in the early 1950s, and today five
to ten pounders are not uncommon at Pyramid.
Tours
are given at the fish hatcheries operated by the Pyramid Lake Indians at
Sutcliffe. Your guide will probably be a member of the tribe. A marina is
operating, and a visitor center with a well-stocked store and an impressive
photographic exhibit devoted to the lake is also open.
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