Weather permitting, a fun alternative to traveling on Interstate 80 over Donner Summit is to take the historic Old Donner Pass Road that parallels the interstate for about 11 miles.
Instead of racing along on a modern, four-lane freeway, this drive is considerably more laid-back, as you wind through beautiful, wooded alpine scenery, enjoying marvelous views of craggy peaks and cliffs.
Heading east toward Reno, you can jump onto the two-lane road at the turnoff at Soda Springs. After passing through some fairly developed areas filled with summer homes and roadside businesses, the road makes a slow climb to the Sugar Bowl Resort and Donner Ski Ranch areas.
If you stop in the parking lot at Sugar Bowl, you can catch a great view of the natural bowl-shaped landscape that gives the resort its name. The two tallest peaks at each end of the bowl are Mount Lincoln and Mount Disney (the latter named after Walt Disney, the original developer of the Sugar Bowl Resort in 1939).
A bit farther up the road, you can see the west portal of the Donner Summit Railroad Tunnel, a 1,659-foot-long passage that was constructed in 1867 for trains traveling through the mountains.
The tunnel was used for about 130 years by the Central Pacific, Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Amtrak trains. These days, the trains travel through adjacent snow sheds rather than the original tunnel.
Also take note of the stone embankments below the train tracks, which were hand-built by Chinese laborers in the late 1860s.
The road continues to 7,088-foot Donner Pass. If you pull over here, you can look out over the steep eastern face of the pass and see the glimmering jewel known as Donner Lake.
Continuing east on the road, you wind downward to the very picturesque Donner Summit Rainbow Bridge. This reinforced concrete arch bridge was built in 1926 (and restored in 1996) and was originally part of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road in the U.S.
But the story of Old Donner Pass Road even predates the Lincoln Highway. In 1844, the Murphy-Townsend-Stephens Party, one of the earliest emigrant wagon trains, blazed a trail through the area on its way to California.
A later emigrant group, the tragic Donner Party, however, gave its name to the pass after it was trapped at the lake below during the winter of 1846-47.
In 1864, a developed byway, known as the Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road, was completed over the pass to serve the construction camps building the Central Pacific Railroad through the mountains.
Historical records indicate the wagon road was abandoned after the railroad was finished but reconstructed as California State Highway 37 in 1909 then incorporated into the Lincoln Highway in 1913.
The Old Donner Pass Road also was part of the Victory Highway in the early 1920s and, after 1925, part of U.S. Route 40—so, you can see, it has had many names and numbers in its long history.
These days, while the interstate has taken away most of the auto traffic the road remains a special drive. The rugged rock cliffs surrounding the bridge are also popular with rock-climbers and hikers.
From the bridge, it’s about six miles to Donner Lake, a scenic body of water that offers sailing, jet-skiing, boating, fishing and swimming. The road winds around the north side of the lake through a forest of condos and summer homes.
At the east edge of the lake is the Donner Memorial State Park, which has a small museum commemorating the ill-fated Donner Party. A short nature hike from the museum leads to the site where the members of that group erected shelters and ends at the lakeshore.
About a mile from the state park is the town of Truckee and where you can reconnect with the interstate and continue to Reno, about 30 miles east.
For more information about Donner Summit and its rich history, go to the Donner Summit Historical Society website, www.donnersummithistoricalsociety.org.
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