Morgan's Tahoe is a memoir of his time with the U.S. Forest Service at Lake Tahoe and, later, of his experiences as Executive Director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) during one of the most tumultuous times in that Agency's existence. During this time, his unit of the Forest Service was engaged in programs not carried out on any other National Forest, from buying thousands of acres of forested land to buying twenty acres upon which a huge casino was being constructed, from building a 165 mile trail around the rim of the lake basin to adapting three historic estates on the shores of the lake to a major tourist attraction, he explains it all. From ski resorts to a Boy Scout camp, from summer homes to lakeside resorts, the range of activities conducted on National Forest lands at Tahoe is amazing and one can learn about them in this book. It has been said that Morgan's role during that time was key to the survival of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. That agency was created by a compact entered into in 1969 by California and Nevada, the two states within which Lake Tahoe is located. First as the Forest Supervisor and later as the Executive Director, his ideas resolved many of the long standing issues at Tahoe and lead eventually to a spirit of cooperation among the various interest groups that survives to this day. Salted among the pages of this book are tales of arson, plane crashes, a fatal ski lift accident, a trans-sierra highway. and other stories. Everyone who is interested in the Lake Tahoe Basin should have this book in his/her library.
About the Author: Morgan graduated from Michigan State University as a civil engineer following service in the U.S. Army and went to work with the U.S. Forest Service in 1959. Assignments in Northern California, the mountains next to the Los Angeles basin, and then to the Gold Country accounted for his first sixteen years as an engineer. His next position was at Lake Tahoe where he was in charge of management of the National Forest lands around the Lake. Ten years later he became the Executive Director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a bi-state agency governing protection and development in the Lake Tahoe Basin. He and his wife, Carole, live in Alpine County, California, not far from Tahoe. Their three children are grown, with successful careers, and with children of their own.