September 6, Donner Pass

At Sid's Restaurant in Auburn, NV I had the best cornbread ever!!! It had pineapple in it. It took away any bitter taste but without a sweet taste. Yum!

This was a day packed with interesting observations. We started in Auburn, NV where we spent the night. We stopped by the Chamber of Commerce where we saw the statue commemorating the Chinese workers that helped build the Central Pacific Railroad. The Central Pacific started from Sacramento, CA and the Union Pacific started from Omaha, NB with the two meeting at Promontory Point, Utah for completion of the first transcontinental railroad.

This statue is "The Chinese Coolie" made by an Auburn dentist in 1972. The term "coolie" was Hindu meaning unskilled labor and at the time was not a derogatory term. He used a mile of rebar in making it.

This caboose is sitting on the original line of the Central Pacific in Auburn, CA. This is behind the Chamber of Commerce.

This is the West end of Bloomer's Cut in Auburn. It is the same as it was when it was built in 1865 and it is still used by the railroad.It is 800' long and 63' tall.

This is the Bloomer's Cut from the East. There was nothing in town to tell us how to get here so we went online and found directions. We had to drive through residential areas, go to a dead end street then hike about 300' to get there. There was only a dirt path leading there but you could tell several weirdos like us go there to see it.

At a rest stop in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. One route that the California emigrants used was through here. We wondered how they could have ever gone through.

More rocks.

This is a picture of a painting of the wagons trying to get up and down the rocks of the Sierra Nevada. Later we were at an interpretive center and saw these paintings.

We had read about this and this painting shows how they tore their wagons apart and pulled them piece by piece over the rocks then put them back together. Their belongings were many times carried by hand.

Donner Summit. The above paintings were of this area. Here is where the Reed & Donner party got stranded during the winter with heavy snows and no food.

  In the middle left of the picture you can see a covered railroad track and where it disappears into a tunnel. This is also at Donner summit. The Central Pacific Railroad had crews working, in shifts, 24 hours a day and were still only able to cut 6" to 12" a day through these mountains.

The stone wall under the tracks they called the Chinese Wall because almost all of the workers were Chinese. They worked harder than the American workers and were healthier. They drank their tea which was made with boiled water while the Americans drank from streams or ponds and often were sick with diarrhea or other diseases.

Here you can see the covering over the tracks to prevent snow from stopping train traffic. This was an American invention which was later used in the Swiss Alps and other places.You can see where the tracks enter a tunnel. There were 6 tunnels drilled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

You can see a short tunnel in the center of the picture and a longer tunnel on the left. This part of the train route is no longer used.

Neither of us had ever seen rock climbing like this. We decided that we are not going to take up this sport.















This bridge is almost to the top on the way up to Donner pass and where all the train track pictures were taken. It is old US 40 and still in use. We drove over it.

This is a picture of the bridge rails on a bridge on the first transcontinental highway. They were built in 1914. The highway was called the Lincoln Highway and went between New York City and San Francisco. It was build between 1913 and 1917. When numbering of roads was begun this highway was renamed US 40. In the 1970s it was replaced by Interstate 80.






They restored the old bridge rails and they are currently at a rest stop on I-80 near where they were originally.









Almost as soon as we left Donner Pass and were on the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the scenery changed to desert mountains with no trees and no vegetation except for an occasional sage brush. There were no rocks of any kind.