Tahoe history at The History of transportation to California.
Wagon, Highway & Railroad Routes
Homewood History.
North Lake Tahoe Historical Society
History Page at the Tahoe Center for a Sustainable Future (TCSF).
at the Truckee Tahoe Sight
at Tahoe Country Sight
High Sierra History Page
Placer County History
Old Time Tahoe at Tahoe Country
History Links at Yahoo
Tahoe Conservation 
Donner Pass Area
   Petroglyphs
History of I-80 and N. Tahoe Area
Calif. History
The Donner Party

Discovery of Lake Tahoe:
The first European American to discover Lake Tahoe was Captain John Charles Fremont, representing the United States Topographical Engineers, and Charles Preuss, his topographer, in 1844 from what is now Luther Pass on Hwy 89 south of Lake Tahoe. Fremont and his guide Kit Carson led expedition parties on the Oregon Trail and into the Sierra Nevada from 1842-1846

See: Crossing Kit Carson Pass - The First Winter Crossing of the Sierra Nevada by John Charles Fremont

Names
Tahoe:
Lake Tahoe was known as "Mountain Lake" until 1852 when it was referred to as Truckee Lake and Bigler Lake, for California's third governor, John Bigler. (Fremont and Carson originally named it Lake Bonpland, after a French botanist who had accompanied an earlier expedition. But Preuss, Fremont's map maker, referred to the lake on his maps of the area as "Mountain Lake".) In 1862 William Henry Knight, map maker for the United States Department of the Interior, asked Dr. Henry DeGroot, a correspondent for the Sacramento Union, for an indian name, whereupon Degroot consulted his notebook and found "tahoe," which, he said, meant "big water," "high water," or "water in a high place." A political debate over the names Bigler and Tahoe ensued with none other than Mark Twain getting involved. Twain, who was unimpressed with indian lore, referred to the name as an "unmusical cognomen" which, he declared, could never do justice to the lake's varied wonders and magnificent setting.
It took 75 years to officially change the name from Bigler to Tahoe.

See: RubiconBay.net/name.htm
and lake-tahoehomes.com/HistoryFacts.pdf

Truckee
Tere are several accounts of the origin of the name. A Paiute indian chief helped early wagon trains, communicating by means of signs and diagrams drawn in the sand. Many versions abound over who first called him "Truckee".
Another account is the first settlers encountered his tribe with the friendly chief yelling "Tro-kay" at them, the Paiute word for "hello" or "all right."

See: Chief Truckee at truckeehistory.org

Reference
Tahoe: From Timber Barons to Ecologists, Rev. 1999, Douglas Strong.
Placer County, An Illustrated History, 2002, C. Myer, (Railroad timetable)

Links
The Lake Of The Sky, Lake Tahoe, 1915 ,By George Wharton James at the Gutenberg eBook Project.
Images of Lake Tahoe at the Univ. of Nevada at Reno Special Collections
North Lake Tahoe Historical Society
Lake Tahoe Research, Magazine, Maps, Literature, and Resources