Lake Tahoe is a pristine jewel of nature. Surrounded on all sides by the majestic Sierra Nevada mountains, one can see on average 70 feet down into its remarkably clear waters.
Lake Tahoe was formed about 2 million years ago and is the second deepest lake in the United States at 1,645 feet deep. It is the tenth deepest in the world and one of the clearest. Lake Tahoe has 72 miles of shoreline, is 22 miles long, 12 miles wide, and the lake surface level averages 6,225 feet. Average water temperatures are 68 degrees in the summer and 41 degrees in the winter.
Lake Tahoe is also designated as an Outstanding National Resource Water, which is a special designation under the Clean Water Act. Only three bodies of water have this designation in the Western United States: Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake in California and Crater Lake in Oregon.