Celebrate reopening of the 1859 Osgood Toll House in South Lake Tahoe

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The Lake Tahoe Historical Society is celebrating the opening of the 1859 Osgood Toll House with an open house on Saturday, October 10, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The public is invited to explore the restored building, learn about life in Tahoe in the 1800s, enjoy a Chautauqua performance by David and Gayle Woodruff portraying Snowshoe and Agnes Thompson from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., tours of the museum and historic log cabin, and a chuckwagon meal available for purchase from Chicken in a Barrel.

At 11 a.m. there will be a guided tour of the Al Tahoe Pioneer Cemetery. Suggested donation is $10 and reservations are required. Call the museum at (530)541-5458.

The museum complex is located at 3058 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

The open house is free and open to the public. Parking is available at the museum, at the back of the old recreation center, ride bikes or use public transportation.

Osgood Toll House was built in the summer of 1859 by Nehemiah “Nemi” Osgood and established at the foot of the Meyers Grade where Echo Lake Creek flows into the Upper Truckee River. Toll houses popped up along the road from Placerville to Virginia City after discovery of silver in the Nevada city in 1858. Those awarded toll house contracts maintained the land along the stretch of road to accommodate the massive number of wagons and horses making the 18-hour journey. In just a two-month period in 1862, 19,386,200 pounds of freight; 2,772 teams and 14,652 horses and mules passed through Osgood’s.

With the establishment of the Transcontinental railroad and dimishing silver deposits, and a state highway system, the Osgood Toll House was no longer in use after the 1880s. It stood empty for three decades. In 1911, the spring thaw broke the dam on Echo Lake Creek and sent tons of water down upon the station washing it from its foundation. It was rescued by the Celio family whose ranch still remains on South Upper Truckee Road and later placed on a foundation in Meyers near the old golf course.

The toll house has been moved several times and was towed to the sit next to the library on Rufus Allen Blvd. in 1974, as that area was going to have a new museum adjacent to the new library. That never happened, but the toll house remained for 17 years and was towed by the Lake Tahoe Historical Society to its current location at the museum complex in 1991.

Since then, fundraising has been ongoing in order to restore the building and make it ready for occupancy once again.

And now the public gets to enjoy the 167-year-old building, the oldest commercial structure in the Lake Tahoe Basin.