Kings Beach, Kings Beach, CA

Kings Beach is the north shore's working heart, and it is named for a gambler. Joe King arrived from Texas in 1922 and built the town's first commercial core near the sand. The beloved story that he won the whole beach in an all-night poker game is legend, and historians lean toward the tamer truth that he and his partner won back their purchase money the night they bought it. Either way, his name stuck when the post office opened in 1937. This is the densest, most affordable, most year-round town on the shore, heavy on 1950s and 60s motel-era and cabin stock, and it houses the people who staff the rest of the lake. Its assets are real: the Kings Beach State Recreation Area is the largest public sand beach on the north shore, south-facing and warm, and the nine-hole Old Brockway course from 1924 sits at the state line, where Bing Crosby ran an informal tournament in the 1930s that his famous Clambake grew out of. The honest picture: Highway 28 congests through the single-street core, summer parking overwhelms the beach, building stock is older and smaller, and short-term rentals are dense. A $50 million core rebuild finished in 2017 added stormwater treatment and roundabouts, and locals still argue about it. It is Tahoe without the gloss, and priced like it.