US 50 in Tahoe, 1977

[dbz77]

[ClassicHasClass]

Couldn't make out Del Webb's High Sierra in that clip. That remains infamous to us for a disastrous family trip to a conference my father was attending in which we hit a deer on US 395 and then my mother got her purse (with her original, actually green, green card) stolen out of the damaged car when we were sledding. Fortunately it was a Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon, the sort that would survive a direct bomb hit, so it just kept going.

[gonealookin]

Couldn't make out Del Webb's High Sierra in that clip. That remains infamous to us for a disastrous family trip to a conference my father was attending in which we hit a deer on US 395 and then my mother got her purse (with her original, actually green, green card) stolen out of the damaged car when we were sledding. Fortunately it was a Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon, the sort that would survive a direct bomb hit, so it just kept going.

"Del Webb's High Sierra" was originally the Sahara Tahoe; it's the boxy building on the left in the last 10 seconds or so of the clip.  That building is still there and has been branded the "Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Lake Tahoe" for the last 7 or 8 years.

Just about all of the California-side junky motel and gas station strip shown in the video is gone, replaced entirely by the Heavenly Village shopping/restaurants/timeshares plus the gondola on the right side, and mostly by condos and more shopping on the left side.  There are still a few of the older buildings remaining on the left side, over a couple of short blocks.

[ClassicHasClass]

Ah, thanks for that. I knew what it had become but not what it was. To this day I still remember sleepily rousing as Dad looked at the damage. The car continued into Tahoe without incident even though it looked like hell.

[dbz77]

I also notice the practice of placing left-turn signals on curved mast arms (instead of post mounting them on a median in the street) already started by 1977.

They still used the 8-8-12 signals. I wonder why these stopped being used for left-turn signals.

[gonealookin]

I also notice the practice of placing left-turn signals on curved mast arms (instead of post mounting them on a median in the street) already started by 1977.

The likely reason the South Lake Tahoe area doesn't have medians anywhere:  that's something that would get in the way of snowplows.  On US 50 through town, the center turn lane is used for temporary snow storage after storms and sometimes is blocked with huge piles of snow for a couple days after a storm until they can come through with the big plows and dump trucks to remove it.