‘Big Blue’ Tahoe Reigns as USA’s Best Lake

Three months at Lake Tahoe, a smitten Mark Twain writes in his 1862 travelogue Roughing It, “would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.”

This “noble sheet of blue water,” Twain rhapsodizes, is so clear “the boat seemed to be floating in air,” and the air is “bracing and delicious…the same the angels breathe.”

A century and a half later, Tahoe’s restorative mountain breezes and translucent water helped propel it past 14 challengers to win a USA TODAY reader survey as the “Best Lake in America.”

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