This answer originally ran in 2007, long enough to pop it up here again. Thanks for remembering it.
The oldest mystery is the whereabouts of a cannon abandoned by the explorer, cartographer, and Union General John C. Fremont. For the full story of Fremont, after whom Las Vegas' main downtown street is named, see QoD 7/10/06. But briefly, in May 1843, Fremont embarked on his second expedition into the western wilderness of the American continent in order to map the area between the Rockies and the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was well-equipped and especially well-armed; the men carried breechloading rifles, the next generation of military assault weapons following muzzleloaders.
They also dragged along a small howitzer -- the so-called "Fremont Cannon." Fremont marched through Utah and into Oregon, then turned south. Somewhere around January 1844, the expedition abandoned the howitzer in heavy snow drifts somewhere in northern Nevada and history buffs and treasure hunters have been looking for it ever since. A full-size replica of the cannon has been fabricated and now serves as a trophy that resides with the football team that wins the fierce-rivalry game that takes place once a year between the universities of Nevada Las Vegas and Reno.
Another mystery, of course, concerns Area 51. Does it exist? If so, what is its purpose? We know that there's an airfield next to the dried-up salt flat that was once Groom Lake in a remote region of Lincoln County in southern Nevada, fully within the off-limits Nevada Test and Training Range. We know that it's claimed by the United States Department of Defense and the United States Air Force. Beyond that, we don't know a thing. The airfield's primary purpose is believed to be the secret development and testing of experimental military aircraft, as well as the storage and analysis of enemy aircraft and weapons systems.
But Area 51 is also a magnet for UFO and ET conspiracy theories; some people claim that the Air Force is not only in possession of extraterrestrial aircraft, but alien beings themselves. Fact? Fiction? All we can call it is an enigma.
And then there are a couple of head-scratchers emanating from Lake Tahoe. One has to do with Tahoe Tessie, a reportedly snake-like creature that has been the subject of sightings and myth for centuries. Both the Paiute and Washoe tribes have oral traditions about the creature and a number of purported eyewitness accounts seem to agree that Tessie is roughly 60 feet long and has an undulating serpentine body, dark skin, and reptilian features. (Other witnesses, however, have compared the beast to a colossal sturgeon.)
Given Tahoe's vast depths (its deepest regions are more 1,600 feet below the surface), it's not inconceivable that a "monster" prowls the bottom. In fact, in the mid-1970s, the renowned French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau led an expedition to the unexplored depths of the lake. While submerged in his mini-submarine, Cousteau reportedly encountered something so terrifying that he refused to reveal what it was to the public. However, he's been widely quoted as later explaining, "The world wasn't ready for what was down there!"
Even more mysterious, Cousteau never released a single shred of data or an inch of film about the bottom of the lake, even though his research trip has been called "the most incredible freshwater event ever encountered by a known expert on marine biology." One account claims that video footage shows the creature, but it has never been revealed.
The other Tahoe mystery is grist for scary campfire stories. Every year, an average of three people drown in Lake Tahoe and another ten are rescued just short of drowning. Though it looks tame and inviting, the huge lake is cold and clear and has strong currents, a potentially deadly combination. Numbness is an immediate danger in lake water with an average surface temperature of no more than 60 degrees (near the shoreline it warms up to only 68 or so) and hypothermia can set in within 15-20 minutes.
The clarity of the lake renders distance and depth deceptive and strong currents can result from heavy runoff from snowpack-fed creeks. People are often swept out from shore -- and they don’t last long in the frigid water.
In addition, Tahoe doesn’t give up its dead. The lake is so cold that it prevents gases from forming that would raise bodies to the surface. Which is why some experts, including this writer, believe that what Cousteau really found was a millennia-old graveyard of perhaps thousands of perfectly preserved and intact bodies at the bottom.
