Truckee (Images of America)

At 5,980 feet, Truckee enchants visitors with a quaintness that belies the mountain town’s rugged past. The very environment in which Truckee exists―high elevation, cold, deep snows―forced its founding fathers, residents, immigrants, and transient workers to make tough decisions while attempting to keep peace in a wildly remote area. In just over 150 years, Truckee has morphed from a collection of lawless rough-and-tumble settlements to a close-knit community with a sense of adventure at its core. The Truckee area was also at the cornerstone of many 19th-century technological innovations. From logging that kept trains stoked and fed Nevada mines to an ice-harvesting industry that transformed refrigerated transportation and the largest paper mill west of the Mississippi, Truckee proved its engineering mettle.