During the mid- and late-19th Century, Lake Tahoe’s proximity to three Sierra passes did little to introduce the comforts of “civilization” to that high country stronghold. Winters were notoriously severe, and the Lake’s lonely few permanent inhabitants were those with the skills, will and wisdom to succeed.

Though not among the Tahoe region’s earliest settlers, Robert Montgomery Watson, born in rural Pennsylvania in 1854, possessed these same pioneering attributes. Watson first came to the Lake at the age of 21, traveling by way of Foresthill, an El Dorado County foothill town from which a large group of residents migrated to Tahoe each summer to work in the seasonal businesses there.

Soon after Watson’s arrival at Tahoe, a doughty young Mainer named Sarah Cunningham, veteran of a childhood crossing of the Isthmus of Panama, accepted his proposal of marriage. The couple said their vows in Gold Hill, Nevada in 1875 and returned to Tahoe City to settle down in a house next door to the future Watson Cabin, on the parcel where Heritage Plaza exists today. Known as the Cliff House, this frame structure underwent a series of additions as the family grew to include five children.

In 1896 news of a gold strike in the Yukon Territory stirred Watson’s wanderlust again and, accompanied by his son Frank, he set off for the Klondike, leaving Sarah and the four children still living at home to “hold down the fort.”

Several trips back to Lake Tahoe in the early years of the new century kept Watson apprised of the tremendous growth Tahoe City was experiencing as a result of the construction of nearby Tahoe Tavern. The wealthy clientele patronizing the new grand hotel had begun to attract a criminal element intent on relieving them of their riches, and for the first time, law and order was needed. In 1906 Watson was appointed Tahoe Constable, charged with upholding law and order in a territory comprising much of the Central Sierra.

Meanwhile, the Watson children were coming of age and finding their matrimonial partners. Daughters Edna and Alice married and left Tahoe City, while Herbert Sydney (Bert) and Robert Howard (known to all as “Rob”) remained in the community, each pursuing a professional career.

Rob turned 20 in 1906, and had begun keeping company with a young lady with her own close ties to Tahoe. The young lady was Estella Tong, a native of the El Dorado County ranching community of Clarksville. Estella’s brother, William Wert Tong, had recently opened a place of amusement in Tahoe City, featuring a gramophone and all the latest records. Another connection was Estella’s uncle, Chester Scott, who maintained a summer ranch in what would later become known as Alpine Meadows. Under these favorable conditions, the Watson-Tong romance flourished, and Estella, better known to all as Stella, accepted Rob’s proposal of marriage.

In the fall of 1908, Rob and his father began work on a picturesque log cabin on land adjoining the Cliff House, on a parcel given to Rob by his father. Set among a cluster of conifers at the edge of the bluff above the Public Commons, this hand-hewn cabin was to become the couple’s honeymoon cottage.

In 1910, Rob and Stella’s daughter Mildred, their only child, was born. Until leaving Tahoe City to attend high school in Auburn, Mildred was a year-round resident of the log cabin that her father and grandfather had built.

As Mildred remembered, “We rented out (the log cabin) at times in the summer, because my father’s business was down at the lumber yard (Tahoe Truckee Lumber Company). Like most summer business people, they worked 15 hours a day, and it was just too hard walking back and forth and business telephone calls and all that, so you rented an old house down there (near the lumberyard). But always in the wintertime we lived in the log house. That’s when my parents would take their trips. They tried to live there in the winter and in the summer. The winters got a little too much for my mother, and there was just too much traffic. Too much banging on the door – ‘I heard you lived here for a long time’ – and she just didn’t want to do it anymore. I guess it was after she gave up driving the school bus.”

As Mildred’s recollection suggests, Stella Tong Watson was a woman ahead of her time, possessed of the spirit and energy to fulfil her aspirations. Unlike her husband, whose world was horses, she preferred her equines under the hood, and in 1929, in answer to an ad for a bus driver and bus to transport west shore pupils to and from the school on Grove Street in Tahoe City, Stella acquired a vehicle capable of accommodating half a dozen youngsters, thus winning the contract.

In those days, Tahoe’s school year began in the late fall, with a winter recess of several months followed by a summer term. While this schedule minimized the inclement weather likely during the school term, it did not completely eliminate poor road conditions, and Stella suffered her share of winter driving woes.

Supplementing Rob’s milling and lumberyard activities was his appointment as County Building Inspector in 1946. However, on Stella’s retirement in 1952 the couple became seasonal residents, leasing their log cabin to Ernest “Husky” Hunt, a retired Stanford athletic coach who had long been a dealer in Native American rugs at Emerald Bay.

In 1977, “Husky” and his wife Fern were followed by Elizabeth “Betty” Layton, who transformed the picturesque old cabin into The Potter’s Wheel. A Chamber of Commerce member and promoter of local history, Layton was instrumental in securing the use of the cabin as a museum, and in the establishment of the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society.

The Watson Cabin celebrates its grand reopening on May 31. Make an opportunity to visit this rustic mountain domicile soon and see what life was like for the pioneer family who called it home more than 100 years ago.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Carol Van Etten is a long-time student and author of Tahoe history. By conducting Oral History interviews and archival research for the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society and the Tahoe Maritime Museum, she has contributed much to our knowledge of Tahoe in earlier times.