Classic, Iconic, Legendary... The Rubicon Trail
On 3 August 1887, lawmakers in the El Dorado County, California passed a decree which classified the mountain trail between Georgetown and Lake Tahoe as a public road. Little did they know it at the time, but
the right of way they had created was to become possibly the world’s most famous 4x4 trails. The ‘road,’ which at the time was used only by stagecoaches, passed through Rubicon Springs – where, twenty years previously, John and George Hunsucker had built a riverside log cabin at the foot of a towering granite cliff. They went on to develop the site into a productive livestock and hunting ranch, before setting up a thriving business bottling the spring water.
Just under two decades had passed when Vade Phillips Clark, the daughter of landowner Joseph Phillips, approached the Hunsucker brothers and made them a successful offer for their holding in Rubicon Springs. She also bought a second parcel of land at Potter’s Springs, around a mile away on the trail – which, less than half a century after the first white man ever laid eyes on Lake Tahoe, was now home to a fully fledged tourist resort.
This was in 1886, and Clark wasted no time in developing her newly acquired land. With the trail established as a public road the following year, she was able to transport building materials and labour to the site – and in 1889, she opened a two-storey hotel with 16 rooms and a restaurant serving three meals a day.
Read the full article in the April issue of Overlander 4x4.
