FROM THE ROAD: IMMIGRANT TRAIL MUSEUM

Donner Lake from the Summit

Before Interstate 80 was plowed through the Sierras, U.S.Highway 40, following the path many immigrant wagon trains had to take, was the means of getting from the east to California. Today the old highway provides excellent vistas of the scenic area and also gives a feeling of what those early pioneers had to traverse on their trip west. From the summit one gets a good view of Donner Lake where some members of the well-known Donner Party were forced to try and survive the wicked winter of 1846. From the top you can understand what it would have been like to travel the pass with snows up to 22 feet deep. 

                                                                       Near the summit the famous Rainbow Bridge

Rainbow Bridge

helps the old U.S. 40 traverse chasms that those on foot would find impassable. From the highway you can also appreciate what problems plagued the railroad construction people who later had to conquer the wildness of the Sierras to lay the first tracks over the summit. An example of the work done here by workers, most of them Chinese, is shown by the snow sheds that had to be built to keep the deep snows off the tracks.

Railroad snow sheds