The Wall Street Journal Calls Truckee the ‘Coolest Place to Ski.’ It’s…not.

In late January, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “The Tiny Western Town That’s Quietly Become the Coolest Place to Ski,” pointing to the “small” town of Truckee, California. I live here and have for quite some time, and I have two words for this article: um, no.

Truckee is just a few minutes north of Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s well known within the ski and outdoor sports world, though may not have the name recognition to average people of some place like Vail. It’s population is about 17,000 year-round, though there can easily be four to five times that many people (honestly, maybe more) on busy weekends, especially as it’s only a few miles from other popular north Lake Tahoe towns like Kings Beach, Tahoe City, and Incline Village. Other ski resort towns have much smaller populations, including Vail, CO (4,500); Breckenridge, CO (4,900); Ketchum, ID (3,600); and even Jackson, WY (10,600). So trying to position Truckee as a “small” town, as if to imply it’s somehow under-the-radar, already threw up some red flags.

An aerial of Truckee’s historical downtown area. Photo: Matt Gush /Shutterstock

I’ll get something out of the way early: Truckee, mostly, is a great place to live. Aside from being surrounded by natural beauty, we have world-class outdoor recreation minutes from our homes, generally pleasant weather, a young and creative population, and reasonable enough access to most of what you’d need from a “big city” in nearby Reno, Nevada. I’m not saying it isn’t great. But I am saying it isn’t exactly “cool” anymore (at least not by mountain town standards; I’d argue it’s cooler than living in a suburb anywhere).

Did Truckee used to be cool? Yup, back when you could get a $1 shifter in the ski resort parking lot (Truckee’s worst-kept secret) and one of the local coffee shops randomly turned into a silent disco at night and you could climb on the roof of one of the local dive bars the writer described as a “cozy pub.” (Ha.)

But this article makes it feel like the Wall Street Journal is 10-15 years behind on what’s actually cool. In its defense, it has an older, East Coast-based readership, and to them, perhaps seeing a town that sells “artisanal soaps” and has an excess of coffee shops seems cool. That may have been cool….in 1999, in Brooklyn. Now, Truckee’s stereotypical visitor (and resident, to a degree), is a Tesla-driving, Arc’teryx-clad tech bro who comes up a few times a year and doesn’t mind paying $25 extra to add truffles to their $36 plate of pasta. (At Great Gold, the delicious but very expensive “hip eatery” the writer referenced).

 

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In the last 10 years or so, visitors have come to Truckee en masse, and fewer and fewer are the die-hard skiers and outdoorsy types coming up to have a semi-affordable epic ski trip. This had led to the usual issues facing ski towns around the country: rising costs of living that outpace local incomes, a massive lack of affordable (or any) housing, and ongoing environmental and community problems stemming from overtourism. In 2024, Lake Tahoe was the most-Instagrammed lake in North America.

Those concerns are mentioned in the article — multiple times, in fact, by both the writer and interviewees — but seem to have been glossed over by whomever wrote the headline (which is often not the article’s author). However, the author did write “Even if the hardcore set grumble about losing their best-kept ski secret, most agree that increased attention makes for a more pleasant ski town, for residents and visitors alike.” This, I would argue, is wrong.

Locals aren’t grumbling about the fact that Truckee is no longer a secret; it hasn’t been since the Winter Olympics put it on the national stage back in 1960. What we’re grumbling about is that the increase in attention means ski traffic is so bad parents can’t get their kids to school on time, that Tahoe’s gorgeous beaches are getting trashed by overtourism, and that our friends and neighbors can’t afford their rent anymore and are moving out of town.

Truckee’s popularity as a ski town skyrocketed in the years after Palisades Tahoe Resort hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics, the first televised Olympic Games in the US. The ceremonies and pageantry were planned by Walt Disney. Photo: EQRoy/Shutterstock

I also take issue with the assumption that overall, “this makes for a more pleasant ski town, for residents and visitors alike.” Respectfully, no. It’s become a less pleasant place to live in the last decade or so, thanks to the rising costs of everything, increased traffic and road delays, and so many visitors that our grocery stores often have empty shelves. I would happily give up several of our overpriced coffee shops and the controversial expansion of already huge ski resort village in exchange for making Truckee more livable.

At this point, readers may be thinking, “she’s a jaded local who thinks she’s allowed to be in Truckee, but other people should stay away.” Fair point, but wrong, as that’s actually not what I think at all. Do I wish Truckee (and other towns around Lake Tahoe) were still hip, underground, and not suffering from overtourism issues? Yes, of course. Who wouldn’t? But it’s natural for towns to change and grow, and I don’t blame anyone who found themselves with the ability to work remotely during COVID and decided they’d rather be in beautiful Truckee than a small San Francisco apartment.

Donner Lake in Truckee, as seen from Old Highway 40 toward Sugar Bowl Ski resort. Photo: bluestork/Shutterstock

The only real claim to being a Truckee “local” belongs to the Indigenous Washoe and Paiute people of the region. Everyone else came here from somewhere else, just as I did many years ago and just as the Tesla-driving tech bros did recently. So it’s not anyone’s fault that Truckee’s popularity has changed the town. But that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge that it’s happened. And I’m sure people who moved here 10 or 20 years before I did would say the same about their early years.

I still live in Truckee, and love living here. But to say that Truckee is “cool” today, given both its popularity and the increased gentrification (a.k.a., Vail-ification, something that has long been happening in mountain towns across the West), feels about 20 years too late.