D.L. Bliss State Park - California

Address:Highway 89
Tahoe, California
Tel: (530) 525-7277

Named for a pioneering lumberman, D.L. Bliss State Park is located on the south end of Lake Tahoe -- its north end overlooks one of the deepest spots in the lake. The Park has truly magnificent natural beauty as well as manmade beauty; there are miles of hiking here with stunning views of the lake, including the 4.5-mile hike to Vikingsholm Castle. Scuba divers will adore the Underwater Park, where there are remains of boats from the 1800s submerged beneath. The lake's shoreline is great for picnicking and sunbathing, and one of the more intriguing attractions here is the Balancing Rock, which rests on a slender stone base and weighs in at 130 tons. The great group and family campsites seal the deal, making this park a definite blissful getaway.

The grandeur of the parks and their setting is a product of successive upheavals of the mountain-building processes that raised the Sierra Nevada. From promontories such as Rubicon Point in D.L. Bliss State Park you can see over one hundred feet into the depths of Lake Tahoe. On the crest of Eagle Falls in Emerald Bay State Park, you can see a brilliant panorama of Emerald Bay, Fannette Island, Lake Tahoe, and the distant Nevada shore. The park is named for a pioneering lumberman, railroad owner, and banker of the region. The D.L. Bliss family donated 744 acres to the State Park system in 1929.