The crest of the Sierra served as an obvious place to end California and begin Utah - the Utah Territory originally included most of the Great Basin - all the way to the eastern slope of the Sierra. The Sierra takes a natural dip to the east has it extends south of Tahoe. This causes on odd bit of trivia: Reno is actually farther west than Los Angeles!

The gentiles (non-Mormons) of the far west of the Utah Territory had been asking Congress for permission to break away from Salt Lake City, to form their own territory. With the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, there was additional motivation to create a new territory: Congress wanted to punish the Mormons for their secessionist impulse when the general government (i.e. what we now call the federal government) sent troops to occupy Salt Lake City in 1857 to suppress polygamy and in response to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In addition, the western Great Basin had a legitimate concern about being ruled by a capital so far away. And finally, the Mormon attitude toward mining was regarded as not friendly since there was a concern that a rush would attract an overwhelming number of gentiles and reduce the ability of the church to maintain its theocracy over the population. In one of his last acts in March 1861, President James Buchanan signed the legislation creating the Nevada Territory. Nevada became a state on October 31, 1864 - just in time to vote for Lincoln's re-election that November.

When it created the Nevada Territory, Congress continued to use the far western boundary, namely the crest of the Sierra, There were boundary disputes: the famed Honey Lake War was over whether the California valley of Honey Lake, to the east of the Sierra crest but to the west of the boundary should be in Nevada. In addition, Aurora, south of Tahoe, was claimed by both the state of California and the Nevada territory and at one time voted in elections in both state and territory and served as county seat for counties in California and Nevada. Here, the problem was uncertainty about where the line marking the crest (in general) fell; a survey determined that Aurora was in Nevada.

The way the line - and the crook in the line - fell just happened to place the angle in Tahoe. The Tahoe Basin today shows the differences in the histories of the two states in dramatic fashion. Much of the California shore is settled by private homeowners. Just over the border on the Nevada side - north shore and south shore - are casinos, but there is surprisingly little private residential land on the Nevada side. This is because George Whittell, Jr., purchased 27 miles of Tahoe shore on the Nevada side, acquiring it from old lumber concerns, which had provided timber for the development of the Comstock mines. Whittell was able to purchase hundreds of square miles for little money during the Great Depression in the 1930s. He was lazy and had little interest in seeing the land developed, except for his famous Thunderbird Lodge. He also sold a few square miles for what is now Incline Village in Nevada. Other than that, Nevada State Parks and U.S. Forestry were able to acquire much of his land after he died in 1969 - leaving much of the Nevada side undeveloped, as opposed to the California part.