There are few routes between Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe through the high mountain passes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Thankfully, Ebbetts Pass offers 61 miles of scenic beauty with dramatic and breathtaking views passing through the Stanislaus and Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forests.
Home to towering majestic giant sequoias and sparkling, rushing mountains streams, along the way you’ll discover millennium’s old valleys carved by glaciers, and mountainsides punctuated with granite outcroppings, basalt columns, and ancient volcanic peaks. In other places along the route, the rugged scenery gives way to serene alpine lakes surrounded by thick forest, open meadows and mineral pools.
Although you would never know it now, Ebbetts Pass Scenic Byway was born of commerce. The route was used during California’s Gold Rush days, yet, it was the discovery of silver in Nevada’s Comstock Lode that originally promoted the construction of a permanent road over Ebbetts Pass; the same route used to get equipment, supplies, and food to burgeoning mining camps mining on the rich silver seams in Silver Mountain. Today, you can dine, savor, enjoy as you make your way through this beautiful, rugged country.
