Allexey W Von Schmidt was a Russian emigrant, surveyor, and visionary who established the present California-Nevada state line between Lake Tahoe and Oregon. During the 1870s he formed the San Fransico and Lake Tahoe Waterworks Company, which proposed building a dam on the Truckee River near this spot to divert water first into a tunnel on the western slope of the Sierra and then on to San Francisco, with the Transcontinental Railroad sharing both the tunnel and the costs. Great Basin water users and monetary problems prevented the dream from becoming reality.