Truckee River in the context of "U.S. Route 40 in California"

The Carson Range is a spur of the Sierra Nevada in eastern California and western Nevada that starts at Carson Pass and stretches north to the Truckee River near Verdi, Nevada.

Interstate 80 (I-80) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. The segment of I-80 in California runs east from San Francisco across the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge to Oakland, where it turns north and crosses the Carquinez Bridge before turning back northeast through the Sacramento Valley. I-80 then traverses the Sierra Nevada, cresting at Donner Summit, before crossing into the state of Nevada within the Truckee River Canyon. The speed limit is at most 65 mph (105 km/h) along the entire route instead of the state's maximum of 70 mph (110 km/h) as most of the route is in either urban areas or mountainous terrain. I-80 has portions designated as the Eastshore Freeway and Alan S. Hart Freeway.

Throughout California, I-80 was built along the corridor of US Route 40 (US 40), eventually replacing this designation entirely. The prior US 40 corridor itself was built along several historic corridors in California, notably the California Trail and Lincoln Highway. The route has changed from the original plans in San Francisco due to freeway revolts canceling segments of the originally planned alignment. Similarly in Sacramento, the freeway was rerouted around the city after plans to upgrade the original grandfathered route through the city to Interstate Highway standards were canceled.

Olympic Valley (historically and informally known as Squaw Valley) is an unincorporated community located in Placer County, California, United States. It lies northwest of Tahoe City along California State Highway 89 on the banks of the Truckee River near Lake Tahoe. It is home to Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley Ski Resort), the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Olympic Valley is the smallest resort area to host the Olympic Winter Games.

Reno (/ˈriːnoʊ/ REE-noh) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada–California border. It is the county seat and most populous city of Washoe County. Sitting in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, in the Truckee River valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, it is about 23 miles (37 km) northeast of Lake Tahoe. Known as "The Biggest Little City in the World", Reno is the 78th most populous city in the United States, the third most populous city in Nevada, and the most populous in Nevada outside the Las Vegas Valley. The city had a population of 264,165 at the 2020 census.

The city is named after Civil War Union major general Jesse L. Reno, who was killed in action during the American Civil War at the Battle of South Mountain, on Fox's Gap.

Washo or Washoe (/ˈwɒ.ʃoʊ/; endonym wá꞉šiw ʔítlu) is an endangered Native American language isolate spoken by the Washo on the California–Nevada border in the drainages of the Truckee and Carson Rivers, especially around Lake Tahoe. While there were only 20 elderly native speakers of Washo as of 2011, since 1994 there had been a small immersion school that has produced a number of moderately fluent younger speakers. The immersion school has since closed its doors and the language program operates through the Cultural Resource Department for the Washoe Tribe. The language remains very endangered; however, there has been a renaissance in the language revitalization movement as many of the students who attended the original immersion school have become teachers.

Ethnographic Washo speakers belonged to the Great Basin culture area and they were the only non-Numic group of that area. The language has borrowed from the neighboring Uto-Aztecan, Maiduan and Miwokan languages and is connected to both the Great Basin and Northern California sprachbunds.