Nevada: Tahoe Tessie & Bigfoot

Nevada: Tahoe Tessie & Bigfoot

From Backwoods Bigfoot Stories by Backwoods Bigfoot Stories-Bigfoot Encounters

August 28, 2026 · 56 min

About this episode

The episode explores the legend of Tahoe Tessie and various sightings around Lake Tahoe.

This week, the Backwoods Cryptid Road Trip crosses Spooner Summit and drops down to the Nevada shore of Lake Tahoe, the second-deepest lake in the United States, to investigate one of the West’s most enduring lake monster legends: Tahoe Tessie.For generations, people have reported seeing long, dark shapes moving through Tahoe’s famously cold, deep water. We look at the geography of the lake, its extreme depth, and the conditions that have helped fuel stories of something large living below the surface. Along the way, we examine recorded Washoe traditions connected to Cave Rock, the 1897 newspaper account attributed to I. C. Coggin, and the surge of reports during the 1980s involving Reno police officers, hikers, an optician, and a local television station owner. We also dig into the University of California, Davis seminar that considered whether an unusually large sturgeon could explain some of the sightings, and separate fact from one of Tahoe Tessie’s most repeated legends: the supposed Jacques Cousteau expedition that never actually happened.Then the stories move from the archives to the water itself. Listeners describe seeing a long shape passing beneath the clear water near…

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of California, Davis

Places: Nevada, Lake Tahoe, Cave Rock, Sand Harbor, Crystal Bay

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