Donner Lake
My first day with Erin and we're already roadtripping and having so much fun. We started around noon and we were hoping that the weather would hold up the entire day. It was a grey day, but please... NO snow in the mountains... ;o)
We had to go thru Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on our way to Lake Tahoe and Reno. Took a brief stop to take some pictures of beautiful Donner Lake.
All of the area here are named after the Donner party emigrants, who got stuck in the Sierras and some of them turned to cannibalism in order to survive... here's some history;
Donner Pass (el. 7,085 ft. / 2,160 m.) is a high mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada, located above Donner Lake about nine miles west of Truckee, California. It is a narrow pass with a very steep approach from the east, and a gradual approach from the west.
To reach California from the East, pioneer emigrants had to get their wagons over the Sierra. In 1844, the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party followed the Truckee River up into the mountains. At the head of what is now called Donner Lake, they found a low notch in the mountains and thus became the first overland emigrants to use the pass.
The pass received its name, however, from another group of California-bound emigrants. In early November 1846, the Donner Party found the route blocked by snow and was forced to spend the winter on the eastern side of the mountains. Of the 81 emigrants, only 45 survived to reach California; some of them resorted to cannibalism to survive.
In 1913, the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, was routed over Donner Pass.
On January 13, 1952, another group became stranded about seventeen miles west of Donner pass at Yuba Pass on Track #2 adjacent to Tunnel 35 (Track #1) at about MP 176.5. Southern Pacific's passenger train City of San Francisco was en route westbound through the gap when a raging blizzard slowed the train to a halt. The passengers and crew were stranded for six days until help could arrive.
