Squaw Valley, Placer County, California

Olympic Valley (commonly known as Squaw Valley) in the U.S. state of California is an unincorporated community located in Placer County northwest of Tahoe City along Highway 89 on the banks of the Truckee River near Lake Tahoe. It is the home of the Squaw Valley Ski Resort, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. It is the smallest place in the world to ever host the Olympic Games.

Mail to Squaw Valley is addressed, "Olympic Valley, CA 96146" to avoid confusion with the census-designated place of the same name in Fresno County.

History

Squaw Valley was once a mining boom town and was the biggest mining operations in the Lake Tahoe region. There were rumors that the mine was "salted" with ore brought in from Virginia City. George Wharton James, Author of the book "The Lake of the Sky" doubts the mines were "salted" with ore and that the energetic prospector Knox started the mine with good faith. He writes all about the History of the Tahoe Region (pre1915) in many of the chapters of his book. The Squaw Valley Mining boom was short lived and by 1863–64 the valley soon lost almost all of its inhabitants to the Comstock lode in Virginia City, Nevada.

By 1942 Wayne Poulsen, a former star skier from the University of Nevada, had acquired in Squaw Valley from the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1946, Poulsen met Alex Cushing, a Harvard University-trained lawyer, with the political connections and access to capital that...
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