Living History Day at Sugar Pine Point State Park

The public is invited to visit the Sugar Pine Point State Park, for Living History Day on July 25th, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., to enjoy a variety of family activities for free. These include guided tours of Pine Lodge, nature walks through the park’s 2,000 acres, use of its two-mile beach, music, games for children, and a display of antique cars and famous wooden boats. Parking is $7 per car.

This is our 26th Living History Day, said Ranger Heidi Doyle of the California ParksDepartment, and already it is one of the larger summer events in the Tahoe
Basin. There’s fun for everyone in the family.

Pine Lodge, also known as the Ehrman mansion, is a three-story American CraftsmanStyle home built in 1903 for Isaias Hellman, a pioneering California banker. The estate is about10 miles south of Tahoe City on Highway 89.

On Living History Day visitors walking through the mansion will watch volunteers inperiod costumes portray members of the Hellman-Ehrman family, as well as the family’s butler,the upstairs maid and the cook. Admission is free for this event only.

Elders of the Washoe tribe, whose ancestors were the original residents of the TahoeBasin, relate their people’s history. Visitors can take guided nature hikes through the Edwin L.Z’berg Natural Preserve to the “highest lighthouse in the world” or along the Washoe Path ofthe Water Babies.

For younger visitors, Living History Day will offer a Kids Zone, with story telling, perioddress up and the opportunity to create pictures of the lodge to take home as souvenirs.

Living History Day gives visitors their only opportunity to go inside General Phipps’sCabin. Frontiersman William Phipps came to Tahoe in 1860 to homestead 160 acres thateventually became part of Sugar Pine Point State Park. Guides playing Phipps’s friends will tellstories of pioneer life as they demonstrate use of their tools and black-powder rifles.

Visitors will want to bring swimwear and towels to take advantage of the estate’s beach.A bathhouse is available for changing clothes. Those who would like to picnic on the vast lawnoverlooking the lake can bring their own lunch or, buy hamburgers, hot dogs, barbecued chicken and soft drinks from one of the participating vendors.