Donner Memorial State Park

Part ofGold Country & the Northern Passes

Where the Donner Party spent the winter of 1846, marked by cabin stone and a monument built to a remembered snow depth.

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Duration

Two hours for the museum, monument, and cabin sites.

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Admission

Day-use fee per vehicle; visitor center admission included.

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Best Season

Year-round; the lake in summer, snowshoe programs in winter.

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Fun Fact

The monument pedestal was built twenty-two feet high to match the believed snow depth of that winter, though later research suggests the real depth was closer to ten or fourteen feet.

The Story

The Pioneer Monument stands on the site of one of the cabins. Its pedestal is twenty-two feet high, built to match what people then believed the snow depth had been in the winter of 1846 and 1847; modern research puts it closer to ten or fourteen feet, which is a useful reminder that monuments record what a generation believed as much as what happened.

What happened was bad enough. A wagon party bound for California took an unproven shortcut, lost weeks in the Wasatch and the salt desert, and reached this lake in late October to find the pass already closed. They built cabins here and at Alder Creek, ate the oxen, then the hides, then the dogs. Relief parties came over the summit in February and after. Accounts differ on the arithmetic, but of roughly eighty-seven people caught by the snow, fewer than half walked out, and some of the living had eaten the dead.

The park sits on the east end of Donner Lake with three miles of shoreline, campgrounds, and a good visitor center that gives the Wašišiw and the Chinese railroad crews their share of the story rather than leaving the emigrants alone in it. A boulder near the museum was the north wall of the Murphy cabin. The Summit tunnels are ten miles west and uphill.