JACK AND PAUL FRANKLIN: BUILDING INCLINE VILLAGE

By Richard Miner

When Jack Franklin was teaching young US Army airmen to fly B-17 bombers at the Yuma Army Air Corps base in the waning months of WWII, he never imagined that in a few short years he would be one of the first building contractors to both live and build in the forest that was still owned by recluse millionaire George Whittell on the shores of Lake Tahoe. After mustering out of the service in 1945 Franklin moved his wife Bernice and newborn son Paul to Reno, Nevada where he took up a position with Capriotti Construction as a project superintendent and estimator. The senior Franklin, born in Sadler, Texas in 1924, soon discovered the joys of spending time at Lake Tahoe which starkly contrasted with the arid flatlands of his youth, and when he could afford it they bought a small plot of land in Kings Beach to build a cabin for weekend and vacation getaways.

They insulated the two-bedroom, one-bath cabin so they could spend winters there and they had indoor plumbing, which many cabins of that time didn’t, but they heated their place only with a central fireplace burning readily available cordwood. But even before the place had been completed in that summer of 1954, they had decided they preferred living at Lake Tahoe over Reno and so made the move to Kings Beach permanent. Because of his work, Jack had obtained contractor licenses in both Nevada and California, and moreover had already constructed two homes in Reno, one in 1946 and another in 1948. So Jack “hung out his shingle” here and soon had a contract to build his first house in what was then known to locals as just plain “Incline,” doing a home on Vivian Lane for Bill Michaud in 1955.

Over the next 5 years Jack built nine more homes at the Lake, including six along the Lake (Ray Plunkett, Don Reynolds, Ken Brown, Ed and Jackie Black, Fred Black and Felner & Ford), two on Pine Cone Circle (the Horgans and Clair Morrison)--the Horgan place still stands at number 1657, and a home for a name lost to history in Crystal Bay. All this plus a remodel on Pine Cone Circle for Dick Graves. He also built two homes in Agate Bay, CA, one in King’s Beach, and another in Tahoe City. One more project was an addition to the Kings Beach Methodist Church.

In the years before 1960 George Whittell and others had sold several dozen plots of land in the area between Sand Harbor and Crystal Bay so this already developed property was not initially included in the 9000 acres that became Incline Village. The map that accompanied my article on the Crystal Bay Development Company’s city planner Raymond Smith (Live.Work.Play Holiday 2022 issue) shows these areas along what is now known as Lakeshore Boulevard. After the CBDC purchase a whole new set of challenges arose. Nevada law required an administrative oversight structure for the new community and the Incline Village General Improvement District (IVGID) came into being June 1, 1961. To manage IVGID the CBDC nominated a board of trustees that was appointed by the county. The board in turn appointed its first General Manager, John Uhalde. who served without pay (he was already on the CBDC payroll as Project Manager) until 1967 when Wallace White was hired to replace him. Wally was the first General Manager to be hired by the board and paid by IVGID funds.

With the creation of IVGID new demands were made on local building contractors. Washoe County still administered zoning, building permits and inspections but a new layer of bureaucracy was involved to deal with the construction of the infrastructure. The plan for the new community had been drawn by CBDC, not the county, although the county had approved it, and construction of the infrastructure of the town was a constant challenge for builders. Water lines were run up the streets past all platted lots, but waste disposal for private homes was via septic systems, which is why the residential lots in the lower portion of town were of a size that would accommodate septic tanks and leach fields. With the creation of TRPA in 1964 all of this was about to change.

During this early period of Incline Village’s history Jack’s son Paul Franklin was growing up at the Lake. Paul had moved with his folks to Kings Beach in 1954 and attended the local elementary school which was within walking distance of their home on North Avenue off Highway 267. The school had just two classrooms with grades 1-3 in one room and 4-6 in the other. He was then bussed to Truckee for high school, which started in grade 7. After graduation Paul enrolled in an engineering program at UNR where he met his eventual wife Sandy White. Sandy was the daughter of Wallace

White, who was the director of the Washoe County Health Department and later became IVGID’s second General Manager. Paul was drafted in 1967 and he and Sandy married just before he was sent to Viet Nam as a communications specialist. Returning to civilian life in 1969 Paul took a job with Byars Construction Company which had the contract from IVGID to build the new sewer system that TRPA mandated to replace Incline’s residential septic systems. Paul was a scheduler and compliance engineer and became intimately familiar with the streets and terrain of IVCB.

In 1978, Paul and Jack decided to join forces and formed the Franklin Builders Company. From the beginning Jack’s operation controlled costs by minimizing overhead. He worked out of his home and Bernice answered the phone and kept the books. All the equipment needed was stored on the job site or rented as necessary. Jack tried to do just one major project at a time—starting a foundation in the spring, having the structure enclosed by October, and working inside through the winter to have it ready by the next summer while a new project was just starting. And they never did any advertising, relying instead on wordof-mouth to bring in new business. There was one exception. As a birthday surprise, Bernice secretly had the company name painted on the doors of Jack’s old pickup truck. Yes, Jack was surprised, and as Paul suggested, quietly pleased. In all, the Franklins individually or together built nearly 90 homes in the Lake Tahoe area, most of them in IVCB. When Jack retired in 1984, Paul continued the tradition of personal attention to each project, never tying up resources in equipment or physical offices or a warehouse for supplies. It could be said they pioneered in home building the “just in time” system which only later came into vogue in manufacturing.

While interviewing Paul for this article I was reminded that many aspects of the construction business at Lake Tahoe have changed since the days when lumber barons and mining magnates dictated the rules—the environment and government regulations be damned. Paul remembers driving down Mt Rose highway and seeing a brown plume of water flowing out into the blue of Lake Tahoe from the areas adjacent to our present day IVGID beaches as runoff from polluted streams and highway and construction debris found its way into the Lake. Today contractors and property developers--many if not most of whom now live outside the basin--still roll their eyes at the mention of the TRPA or “the bureaucrats” who live in Carson or Reno, but you have to admit Lake Tahoe itself has not looked better in years.

Paul Franklin retired as a contractor in 2014 and still lives with his wife Sandy in Incline Village in the home he built on Eagle Drive in 1989.