Emigrant-Donner Camp

The Donner Party rested here, and rested too long. In the autumn of 1846 the emigrant company camped in the Truckee Meadows to recruit their worn oxen before the final climb over the Sierra—the lush valley grass a welcome relief after the desert. The delay was fatal. When they finally started up the mountains, early snows trapped them near the lake that now bears their name, in the most infamous ordeal of the overland migration. Other trains crossed safely; the Donners lingered. The marker stands on ground the wagons knew, where a fateful pause was taken.

What the plaque says

Upon entering the Truckee Meadows along the Truckee River, thousands of California-bound emigrants turned their wagons southwest to avoid extensive marshes and uncrossable sloughs. Here at the base of Rattlesnake Mountain the emigrants established a campground, which extended nearly two miles to the east and west, one half mile north and south. Numerous local springs furnished quality water and the protected location of the camp provided an ideal locale for a rest stop after hundreds of grueling miles spent traversing the Humboldt River Valley. Once rested the emigrants turned west to face their last major obstacle, the Sierra Nevada. In October of 1846, the ill-fated Donner Party spent five days in this area resting and grazing their weary animals. Plagued by a series of unfortunate incidents one member of the party, William Pike, was accidentally shot, died, and was buried in the vicinity.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Reno — 4.8 mi
  The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World
• Virginia City — 13 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand
• Chollar Mine — 13 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Sand Harbor — 21 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Huffaker’s — 2.6 mi
• Moana Springs — 2.7 mi
• Virginia and Truckee Railroad Right-of-Way — 4.0 mi
• Glendale School (1864- 1958) — 4.1 mi