Tahoe City's new mayor, Wig Blackhammer, is known around Lake Tahoe as "The Legend" in the year 1901, but his struggle with drug addiction threatens his fight to save the lake from men that would divert its water to San Francisco. Wig's recent marriage to Jiao Jin, the former Chinatown slave, is threatened when his ex-wife arrives to prove he was never divorced making the mountain man a bigamist. A former slave turned carpetbagger, Roson Boothby, befriends the Legend and helps him lead the battle against the ex-mayor of Tahoe City, Jocko Selman who leads the aqueduct project. Gordon Kaye, railroad executive, leaves his job in San Francisco to invest all his money with Jocko. Gordon's daughter Geneva holds a secret that could be used against Wig Blackhammer and help her father and the men that want drain the lake. Mayor Blackhammer receives a blow to his head that threatens his life and leaves him unconscious for weeks. When he awakens, his wife leaves him, his ex-wife plots his destruction, and Geneva Kaye arrives to contest Doctor Veronica Goldman for Wig's love. After Roson is attacked and disappears, the mountain man is left with a handful of friends to fight against an enemy with overwhelming numbers who will stop at nothing to destroy Lake Tahoe. Ultimately, Wig's fate and the fate of his loved ones and enemies alike, will be settled by the largest natural disaster to ever hit the United States.