Do you ever wake up and just have to see a waterfall? I did today and knowing that visiting our local Tahoe ones involved traversing too much snow, we were beyond excited to find Kings Canyon Waterfall, just down the hill in Carson City, Nevada.

These 30-foot falls, just west of downtown, require a hike to access, but that hike is a relatively short 0.75-mile round-trip walk with about 175 feet in elevation gain on a clear trail. It's a popular jaunt for locals and a great reason to stop in Carson on your drive through (or when doing a Costco run).
Interestingly, we learned this is Carson's water source and I think we picked the perfect day to explore this surprisingly hidden canyon. We had no idea this was here. Wow.
The sound of the falls are almost deafening. Steve made a video of them, so worth watching.






Besides a refreshing waterfall, there is a great deal of history on this road. During the 1850s, part of the Kings Canyon Road was called the Lake Bigler (Lake Tahoe) Toll Road, the Lake Tahoe Wagon Road in 1863, and in the 1920s Kings Canyon was also called Ostermann’s Grade, eventually becoming the Lincoln Highway. The early pioneers needed a way to get from Carson City to Lake Tahoe. Kings Canyon was once the location of not only a toll road, but flumes and, at one time, a resort and tavern. Cool stuff.
This plaque shared the history of this scenic valley, once the Borda Sheep Farm. Dutch Borda was born in Minden to Ramon and Gorgonia Borda on July 17, 1921. His father moved to the Carson City area from Spain’s Basque country, and bought property off of Kings Canyon. Borda’s mother ran the East Fork Hotel in Gardnerville until her death in the 1980s.

Dutch eventually sold the Kings Canyon land through the Nature Conservancy in a deal which kept the land in one piece and put it under control of the Forestry Division as an historic sheep camp. What a wonderful gift to the people of Carson and to those of us just passing through.