New insight at site of harrowing history
The administrative offices of the Donner Memorial State Park Visitor Center are surprisingly wacky. An inside joke hangs above the communal microwave, and State Park interpreter Nikki Combs giggled as she tried to find an out-ofthe-way spot for us to chat. Really, the museum’s office is no different from any other professional space filled with hardworking staff — it just happens to be built on the site of the Donner Party encampments, the very location where dozens of California-bound emigrants were trapped and forced to eat their dead to survive the winter of 1846.
Twenty years ago, as a senior at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, I was tasked with reading the dramatically titled Donner Party historical account, “Ordeal by Hunger.” The book was a hit with the students in my California history class, a coveted assignment that was hardly considered homework. As it is with many others, the harrowing story of the ill-fated Donner Party has remained endlessly fascinating to me.
Combs pointed out repeatedly that the Donner Memorial State Park Visitor Center is focused on a great deal more than Donner Party doom and gloom. The $9.6 million facility was built in 2015 — after a solid two decades of fundraising, planning, design and construction. Designed to resemble a more grand version of the train track snow sheds that inhabit the nearby mountains, the center replaced the previous museum built in 1962, a facility that mostly just focused on Donner Party artifacts.
“We’ve expanded the story to include the transcontinental railroad, the Chinese worker experience and the construction of the Lincoln Highway,” Combs said. The center also features a great deal of Native American history and artifacts, an inclusion that’s all-tooforgotten since the scenic area has been “Donner-fied.”
The ever-cheery Combs has been a state park interpreter for 17 years, and with Donner Memorial State Park for two years. “The draw for me was not just the story of the Donner Party,” she said. “Donner gave me a chance to do both natural and cultural history.”
“This is really the gateway to California,” volunteer Jerry Blackwill said of the snow-dusted region. Blackwill serves as the president of the Board of Directors of the Sierra State Parks Foundation, the nonprofit partner of Donner Memorial State Park.
He noted that the Donner Pass opening through the Sierra Nevada has been used for centuries; first by the Native Americans, then by California immigrants. The cross-country railroad and highway followed. These days, the clear blue Donner Lake serves as a vacation getaway for hikers, campers, crosscountry skiers, nature lovers and yep — spooky history buffs. Volunteers offer maps and hiking tips, flopping laminated guides on the information counter to detail the short path to a Donner Party cabin site for the umpteenth time.
The center doesn’t shy away from Donner Party history; it just emphasizes that one tragedy does not define an entire state park.
Still, Combs and Blackwill happily succumbed to my Donner Party questions. Yes, some locals believe the area to be haunted. And yes, there might still be some Donner Party body parts scattered beneath the striking Pioneer Monument outside the center. According to Combs, cadaver dogs have hit on that location three times.
In the summer of 1847, once all of the Donner Party survivors had been rescued and the snow had melted, Union Army Gen. Stephen Kearny and his troops ventured over the Donner Summit to clean up the encampment’s grim debris. According to Blackwill, the soldiers gathered up all of the remnants they could find — including human remains — placed it in one of the party’s hastily built shacks, and set the whole thing ablaze.
A hundred years ago, finding a Donner Party artifact was a possibility. These days, it almost never happens. Still, there are likely a few small pieces and a few human bones that have settled deep into a final resting place, an unseen reminder of an ambitious and doomed collection of Americans and their deadly winter alongside one of the state’s most beautiful lakes.
Combs pulled out a small navy-blue box. Inside were hundreds of index cards, each with a name and contact information of a person claiming to be a descendant of a member of the Donner Party. I’d always thought of the Donner Party as California’s most infamous story of emergency cannibalism. Combs offered a gentle reminder that in fact, at its nutrient-packed heart, the Donner Party is an endlessly interesting lesson in survival at all costs.
The center doesn’t shy away from Donner Party history; it just emphasizes that one tragedy does not define an entire state park.