SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – With a big change on the horizon for Beach Resort and Lodge, the property has some feeling especially nostalgic. Patti Manus, daughter of Max Hoseit, spoke with the Tribune about the property’s history and her family’s memories of the place.

Hoseit had a lifelong love of Tahoe, growing up in San Francisco and coming to Tahoe in the 1940s to work as a soda jerk. He eventually built a cabin in the Al Tahoe neighborhood, and though his wife Eleanor wasn’t interested in living in Tahoe full-time, they spent many years in the mountains.

Hoseit was a lawyer and pilot, commuting to Tahoe via his own plane to work. He, like many others in Tahoe in the early years, helped establish businesses that we know today—as one of the few local attorneys, he helped with the formation of Barton Hospital and Heavenly. He became business partners with George Karadinas and Robert Maloff and together, they bought the lot of 3411 Lake Tahoe Boulevard. It was the very same property Hoseit had worked at as a soda jerk, and there they built the Timber Cove Lodge.

“It was his baby,” said Manus, “It was really his favorite property. It had the public beach and the marina.” Manus recalled her and her siblings’ time working there in the summers as a joyous time. They went to school in Sacramento, then lived in Tahoe during the summer and helped build the business.

Cathie, Joan and Paul all worked in the restaurant, but Manus said she didn’t want to. “I was never a food person, so I worked the front desk. It was $6 extra a night for a lakeview room. We’d fill up almost every night in the summer,” she said. Her family had a property in Zephyr Cove, and she remembered her brother taking his boat out to Timber Cove to work, then boating back after he was finished.

The marina at Timber Cove was also the site of their own triathlon. Hoseit would host the event at Timber Cove, having it as the central spot and sending runners, bikers and kayakers out to Pioneer Trail and Pope Beach.

“We even had our own t-shirts,” said Manus. “All the money that we got from that event, dad would donate to the South Tahoe cross-country team.” Manus, a runner herself, enjoyed training at high altitudes and recalled her time running in the mountains with fondness.

Manus and her siblings worked in the hotel for many years. Ultimately, she stopped working there after she was married—and she and almost all her siblings had their receptions at the lodge. “It seemed to be the thing to do,” said Manus, who is the youngest of her family. “And who doesn’t want to get married in Tahoe?”

Eventually, Hoseit’s partnership with Karadinas and Maloff ended in the mid-90s, which ended Manus’ stays at the Timber Cove Lodge. “I wish I could’ve kept working there. It was a lot of fun,” she said.

The property changed hands and Hoseit continued to invest in hotels throughout the Tahoe Basin and into Reno. But Hoseit, who’d kept his law office upstairs in the Timber Cove Lodge, always had a fond spot for the property.

Hoseit died earlier this year, outliving both his business partners and leaving his own legacy in “his favorite place on earth, Lake Tahoe.”

“Nothing stays the same. The small business guys, like my dad, it’s over for them,” said Manus on the property’s new management. “It was a lot simpler with permits and costs back then. Now, every hotel you stay at is the same few companies and there aren’t these small motels and hotels anymore.”

But Manus says she understands that’s how business operates. And while the property will change with renovations and management, the memories her family made there, and its history will remain.

Eli Ramos is a reporter for Tahoe Daily Tribune. They are part of the 2024–26 cohort of California Local News Fellows through UC Berkeley.