Donner Pass Road - Truckee, California
Pioneer Route
 

      
The first whites
      to settle in what was to become Truckee were gold miners and
      homesteaders, heading cross country to California. The route
      along the Truckee River from Reno to Donner Pass was one of many
      used to pass through the Sierra Nevada. The pass itself, and
      Donner Lake (pictured above, near the turn of the 20th Century)
      gained their names from the infamous Donner Party of settlers
      that was stranded here in the fall of 1846 by record snows.

      


      
The town of Truckee
      is near Donner Lake, but didn't get its start until the 1860s,
      when construction of the transcontinental railroad began over
      Donner Pass (above). The railroad afforded access to rapidly
      growing markets in California and to the rest of the country.
      With its strategic location on the rail line, and in the high
      Sierras, Truckee developed an economy largely based on timber
      and mining blocks of ice that could be exported by rail. The
      latter continued into the 1920s, when refrigeration technology
      was invented.

      


      
As early as the
      late 1800s, Truckee began to realize the potential that tourism
      held for the area. Nearby Lake Tahoe was already a popular destination
      for Californians seeking escape from the hot Central Valley summers,
      and a new interest was growing in winter sports. Truckee hosted
      ice skating and sleigh rides in this early period of its history.
      By the early 1900s, the storefronts of Commercial Row (above)
      had grown to be much of what survives today. In the 1960s, tourism
      reached a new level when the Winter Olympics were held at Sqauw
      Valley, just a few miles outside of Truckee.


      
Today, the town
      continues to flourish with the business of tourists who are whisked
      into town year-round on modern Interstate-80, which spared the
      historic downtown and has allowed the old Donner Pass Road to
      become a main street again.

      
<
      Back to Truckee Main Page n
      Next Page
      >

      
  All
      images are ©Tom Kloster, 2002, and may only be used by permission