Donner Pass

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Donner Pass in the 1870s

Donner Pass, elevation 7,085 feet (2160 meters), is a 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.

1 History
2 Geography
3 Weather
4 External links
5 Popular Culture

[edit] History

To get to the Donner Pass, pioneers had to travel through several forts, including Fort Bridger and Fort Laramie. The trail to the pass also passes through the Ruby Mountains and the Great Basin.

It was the location where, in the winter of 1846–1847, the Donner Party became trapped by snowstorms and members were forced to endure such great hunger that animal hides and tree bark were the only nutritional sustenance available to the Party. Many died, but some resorted to exhuming the already deceased party members from the snow for edible consumption in order to survive.

The summit portion of the original Central Pacific Railroad Sierra grade (Track #1) was built through Donner Pass between 1866 and 1868 and was in continuous daily use from the day that the first CPRR passenger train ran through the 1,659-foot Tunnel #6 (The "Summit Tunnel") on June 18, 1868, until 1993 when the Southern Pacific Railroad (which operated the Oakland-Ogden CPRR line until its 1996 merger with the Union Pacific Railroad) abandoned and pulled up the 6.7 mile section of Track #1 over the summit running between Shed #41 at Norden (MP 192.1) and the covered crossover at Shed #47 (MP 198.8) a mile East of the old flyover at Eder in favor of running all traffic over Track #2 through the 10,322-foot long Tunnel #41 (aka "The Big Hole") under Mt. Judah about one mile South of Donner Pass. Opened in 1925 when the summit section of the grade was finally double tracked, Tunnel #41 is considered far easier and less expensive to maintain and keep open in the winter then the Track #1 tunnels and snowsheds over the Summit.[1]

In conjunction with major ongoing upgrades and expansions being made to the Port of Oakland in order to better accommodate the rapidly growing North American trade with Asia and the Pacific, the cooperation of the UPRR, the Port's principal rail partner, has been sought to "construct a second track and raise tunnel clearances over Donner Pass for container trains linking California with the rest of the country."[2] To accomplish this objective would likely require the UP to either drive a second parallel tunnel next to Tunnel #41, or to restore and reopen the summit section of Track #1. Either infrastructure upgrade would increase the route's overall capacity, considerably simplify traffic management, and effectively eliminate delays currently caused by having to run all east and west bound traffic between Norden and Eder over a single track. [To fully eliminate the grade's "bottleneck" delays the now single track 7.1 mile section between Switch #9 (MP 171.9) and Shed #10 (MP 179.0) just west of Cisco would likely also have to be restored to double track.] Increasing tunnel and snowshed clearances on the Sierra grade would also permit the use of double-stacked container cars which now can only be run via the UP's Feather River grade.[3] (Under current circumstances, however, none of these major upgrades seem particularly likely to happen anytime soon.)

[edit] Geography

The Donner Pass Road, which was part of the historic Lincoln Highway (the first road across America), crosses Donner Pass. Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra crest through the Euer Saddle which is approximately two miles to the north. Euer Saddle is slightly higher than the Donner Pass, but it is also much wider.

[edit] Weather

Winter weather in Donner pass can be brutal. Precipitation averages 54 inches, most of which falls as snow. At 415 inches per year, it is one of the snowiest places in the United States. To take advantage of this, the Boreal Ski Resort was built to the north: ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area report an average of 300"-500" of snowfall per season.[4] Winds in the pass can also become extreme and 100+ mph (160 km/h) wind gusts are common during winter storms.

The winter of 1846-47 was especially severe, and this is generally cited as the single most important factor in the disaster of the Donner Party.