Donner Pass wasn’t the part of the route which was the doom of the party that bears that name, though it is where most of them died; a late start and a “shortcut” which wasn’t (across the Salt Flats!) were the primary causes. If they had arrived at the pass as little as a week earlier they could have made it over.

This is absolutely untrue. Over the Rockies, there is pretty much only one path over South Pass (the route of the settlers in this post, as well as most of the westward emigrants).

But there are other passes, as well as several routes through the Yellowstone area (the path of Lewis and Clark) and the Yuma area (the southern route through Santa Fe, used by early traders.

Through the Sierra Nevada, there was not only Stephens Pass (commonly called Donner Pass), the subject of this story, but Johnson Pass, Sonora Pass, Tioga Pass, Walker Pass, and many others, including several routes in the Lassen area.

If you were going to California, you had to follow the Humboldt, which cuts through the ranges (and then disappears entirely at the Humboldt sink, very discouraging.) Northward, you cut through Idaho, which had its own challenges. There was a party that tried to cut south, to hit Los Angeles… and they ended up naming Death Valley. They even tried the Colorado River, which has the unfortunate problem of entering the Grand Canyon, but which is unusable as a portage route due to rapids long before it gets there.

There were some who tried to get to California via the Oregon Trail, but they had to cut south through the Siskiyous, not an easy task. At least they could winter over in the Willamette Valley if necessary.

Y’know, this last fall I moved back to California and noticed something I never had before: Donner Pass is SCARY. It’s very steep (on the interstate, no less!) and it was snowing (in September; did I mention I was wearing shorts?) and we were in a moving van, which really accentuates how disturbing this drive is. I’ve been over this pass hundreds of times but it was usually in a hatchback or other small car, which feels safer to me.

But the real joy is to get on a little road to an overlook of the lake, from which you can see the original pass. These folks were insane. In-freakin’-sane. That or brave beyond belief. I might feel confortable walking over it, but with a wagon? No way.