WaltersRail

For many years, I have wanted to write about the railroad across Donner Summit, but one thing and then another have intervened: work, illness, marriage, children. But time heals all wounds, and the years have allowed me to collect enough images for public presentation.

Today (July 2026), Union Pacific runs its heavy westbound traffic on the one percent grade across Beckwourth Pass and through the Feather River Canyon. Most eastbounds and all intermodal traffic in both directions traverse Donner Summit. BNSF also runs trackage rights trains across Donner, and the heavy westbounds you see below almost all belong either to BNSF or to Southern Pacific before it was swallowed by UP.

An eastbound manifest in Truckee Canyon, which is subject to repeated fires, as evidenced by the barren tree trunks lying prostrate on the mountainside. The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada sees far less rain and snow than the west. Winter storms off the Pacific that pound California dump most of their moisture before reaching the top of the mountains.

In SP days, eastbound trailers roll downgrade beside the Truckee River.

Eastbound Amtrak beside the Truckee River. The tracks follow the river all the way down the canyon until the mountains open wide at Verdi, Nevada.

Eastbound stacks leaving Truckee Canyon.

"They built the Great Wall of China, didn't they?" Charles Crocker's infamous justification for bringing Chinese workers to the Central Pacific.

“D-O-N-E.” -- W.N. Shilling, a telegraph operator for Western Union, tapped out this word in morse code on the telegraph once the final spike was driven.

About 13 miles due west of Donner Summit,
a westbound SP slides downhill in full dynamics.

Westbound Amtrak has passed Verdi, Nevada, and is entering Truckee Canyon.

Westbound Amtrak at Verdi, Nevada.

Eastbound BNSF stacks on trackage rights are leaving Truckee Canyon.

More BNSF at Verdi, Nevada.

On January 8, 1863, in Sacramento, construction began on the Central Pacific Railroad. The men who built the railroad were almost all Chinese immigrants escaping poverty and persecution and, in your author's opinion, have never been given the credit they deserve for completing a task equivalent to building a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean in the 21st century.

On the way to Donner Summit, these workers drilled eleven tunnels through solid granite, including the original 1,659 feet tunnel at the top of the mountain, which took 16 months to complete. They endured avalanches, blizzards and explosions, often laboring in snow teen feet deep or more. They slept in tents and wooden huts. No one knows for sure how many died. Estimates run as high as 2,000.

After five long years, they had scaled the 7,042-foot Donner Summit, then followed the Truckee River downgrade to the California-Nevada border. On December 13, 1867, the first locomotive crossed the state line.

Mid-trains in Truckee Valley.

The easiest section of the new line was the relatively flat 18 miles from Sacramento west to Junction (name later changed to Roseville), which due to construction delays was not completed until April 26, 1864.

The next segment encompassed 30 miles to Colfax across steadily rising Sierra Nevada foothills that required increasingly deep cuts and precipitous fills, including the first substantial blasting on a line that eventually would more or less blast its way up the side of a mountain. In those 30 miles, the railroad climbed 2,255 feet. Colfax was reached in September 1864.

SP 8450 West is approaching Roseville.

Beyond Colfax, the line made a huge horseshoe up the side of a ridge, then made another horseshoe high above the North Fork of the American River. Construction was now slow and tedious.

This is the big double-horseshoe north of Colfax. The problems with photographing it are legion. (1). The image above is looking down from about 6,300 feet, far too high for railroad photography. If you look closely, you can see a train. (2). The straight-line distance from the left side of the first horseshoe to the right side of the second is about one mile, the rise in elevation about 200 feet. (3). Virtually all of the tracks are obscured by foliage. (4). There is no access save for one railroad service road buried in the trees that does not follow the tracks around the curve to the North Fork of the American River.

Eastbound Amtrak in the Colfax horseshoes, crossing I-80 on Thanksgiving Day 1972. The "dog's breakfast" of rolling stock was typical of Amtrak's early years, as was the SP motive power.

On the same day, an eastbound manifest climbs through the first horseshoe west of Colfax. 50 years later in 2022, I revisted this area to discover that foliage had completely covered the tracks.

SP 8428 West crossing I-80 on the first big horseshoe northwest of Colfax.

Dutch Flat -- 3,390 feet above sea level -- was not reached until June 1866. The railroad had climbed 3,340 feet in 55 miles. On the 4th of July, almost the entire town paid $3.00 for a round trip to Sacramento and back. The festivities were interrupted by a fire along the right-of-way, and the return journey did not arrive in town until about 5:00 a.m. the next morning.

Southern Pacific 9197 West is climbing toward Dutch Flat.

Rail laying on the 21 mile section from Alta to Cisco began in early September 1866. In an attempt to speed construction, the Central Pacific recruited even more Chinese laborers from the mines in Calaveras County.

From 1847 to 1860, approximately 50,000 Chinese immigranted to California to work in the mines. Resentment against the immigrants began to fester after the Civil War, leading eventually to a federal law in 1879 limiting the number of Chinese arriving to 15 per ship.

President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed the law, because it violated U.S. treaties with China. However, in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, pursuant to the terms of a newly negoiated treaty, suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The Act required every Chinese citizen traveling in or out of the country to carry papers identifying his status as a laborer, scholar, diplomat or merchant.

Mid-trains on a UP grainer almost two miles long!

Northern California experiences wet and dry seasons. May through October are generally dry. November through April are wet, with the heaviest rains occurring in winter. Your author was an undergraduate at Stanford (1969-73), where a small pond, called the Lagunita, fills with water during the winter, then dries out completely in the summer and into fall. During the dry season, the rainless period can easily extend 120 days.

On the other hand, during the rainy season, it can pour down multiple days in a row, as low pressure after low pressure rumbles east off the ocean. And the rain along the coast turns to feet of snow when it hits the Sierra Nevada, which translated to English means Snow Mountain.

If you have not lived through a winter in the High Sierra, any description of the privations involved will not resonate, because it will be impossible for you to imagine weather that harsh, snow that deep, more snow and more snow and more snow -- snow that seems unending, as though all the snow in the universe is being dumped on your little corner of the world.

Donner Summit gets an average of 34 feet of snow each winter -- in some years more than fifty, enough to completely bury houses and trees. In 1865, there were 44 separate storms and 60 feet of snow.

Because of its high moisture content, the snow on Donner Summit is heavy enough to bend trees parallel to the ground. Locals call it “Sierra Cement.”

John Steinbeck spent a winter snowed-in at Lake Tahoe, with drifts taller than the top of his cabin, and described the result:

Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that the subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words. Can its reverse be true- a man who has no one to say anything to has no words as he has no need for words? (Travels with Charlie in Search of America.)

As the foothills turned into mountains, deeper cuts were required. Workmen would drill multiple channels 10-20 feet long, fill them with kegs of black powder, then ignite each in rapid succession. Such crude techniques resulted in many many injuries and deaths. Near Gold Run, seven men (all Chinese) were blown apart like rag dolls.

However, construction pushed forward, and on Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1866, the first train ran to Cisco, elevation 5,933 feet.

Trains meeting in the horseshoe at Blue Canyon -- roughly halfway between Colfax and Cisco. Like much of the west side of the mountain, this location is overwhelmed with trees, making me think that one of the most difficult jobs of constructing this railroad was the clearing of the forest.

About five miles as the crow flies below Cisco, westbound UP stacks curve beneath a signal tower, with one signal removed. This segment of the line was double-track for years until the Rio Grande purchased the SP in 1988 and removed large portions of one track, including the original line through the original Donner Summit tunnel and the long snow sheds on the northern slope of Mount Judah.

Westbound Amtrak at same location.

Westbound SP trailers near the same location. The train is running on the tracks later removed by the Rio Grande.

Coil steel train on the track later abandoned.

Two weeks after the first train ran to Cisco, a monumental snowstorm descended over the mountain, the heaviest in years. 5,104 feet below and 146 miles southwest, San Francisco recorded its heaviest December rainfall ever, including records current to 2025.

In December 1866, trains stopped running as cuts caved in and fills washed away. For the next three months, the line to Cisco was out of service. Near the summit, Chinese workmen on a grading crew were buried alive in a snowslide and died before they could be pulled out. Whole work camps were swept away in avalanches, and the men in them were not found until the snow melted the following August.

When the Central Pacific was choosing the best route across the California mountains, insufficient consideration was given to snowfall. Theodore Judah, who surveyed several potential routes, believed that the Donner Summit Route, though the highest in elevation, would be the fastest to construct. He was warned that winter snows above 6,000 feet were debilitating but believed that dedicated maintenance crews could keep the line clear without problem. In the 19th century, he was wrong.

The most logical alternative to Donner Summit was the Feather River Route, surveyed by Arthur Keddie and rejected by Judah, which crossed the mountains at Beckwourth Pass at around 5,000 feet—over 2,000 feet lower than Donner. The Central Pacific spurned Beckwourth Pass because the steep, winding canyon of the Feather River would have required a huge number of tunnels.

Later, of course, the Western Pacific completed a competing line along the Feather River, and today both routes are operated by Union Pacific, which prefers Donner Summit for eastbounds and intermodals, and the Feather River Canyon for heavy westbounds.

The line from Alta to Cisco was not cleared of snow until March 19, 1867.

Southern Pacific 9197 East strains into the grade near Emigrant Gap.

When the snow cleared in 1867, construction resumed east of Cisco, as the roadbed climbed steadily through the thick forest, climbing 800 feet to Soda Springs in about nine miles on an almost perfect east-west alignment. Today, I-80 runs relatively close to the tracks. Photography requires some ingenuity but can produce surprisingly results. I am quite certain that the men who built the railroad never once thought that someday people would wander through the forest, looking for locations to photograph trains.

Eastbound Amtrak climbing toward Soda Springs.

Westbound in full dynamics.

Westbound Amtrak at Soda Springs in July -- after a particularly harsh winter.

Eastbound stacks at Soda Springs.

East of Soda Springs, at Norden, the railroad approached the summit and entered the area which receives the heaviest snowfall each winter. Before the railroad was completed, construction began on wooden snow sheds to protect the trains, crews and passengers.

Sixty-five million board feet of lumber and 900 tons of bolts and spikes were used in the initial construction. 2,500 men were dedicated to the task. Due to fire and/or collapse from the weight of snow, the wooden sheds were under perpetual repair.

Snow sheds did not just cover the tracks. Station stops were attached to the sheds, along with workers' houses, hotels, businesses and other buildings. A school at Donner Summit was attached to the sheds through which children walked to school. A roundhouse at Norden was covered by a shed.

Soon we were in the snowshed, then in a tunnel, then a shed, next a tunnel and so on under a continual roof like a covered bridge for 22 miles and after an Egyptian darkness, for the tunnels are not lighted, through the cracks and windows in the sheds I could see deep canyons and mountain peaks all covered with snow. About the middle of the snow sheds we came to a railroad station and hotel. We stopped a few minutes and found everything frozen hard and cold as mid winter. This is the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. (Traveler’s Letter, San Francisco, California, William Smith,1875.) (https://www.sierrasun.com/news/snowsheds-protection-for-not-just-trains-over-donner/)

Fire was a continual problem. Embers from passing locomotives ignited the timbers, and the tunnels acted as chimneys. In 1916, the railroad lost 1,770 feet of sheds. When the railroad began firing its steam locomotives with oil instead of coal, the annual loss dropped to approximately 500 feet.

By the late 20th century, modern snow removal equipment allowed Southern Pacific to eliminate many wooden sheds. Other were replaced by concrete structures. In 1982, a wooden shed still protected the tracks at Norden that led to the original summit tunnel.

An eastbound on the track leading to the second summit tunnel -- the "Big Hole" -- discussed below. The last remaining wooden shed at Norden still stood in 1982 over the tracks leading to the original tunnel.

Another eastbound above the old Norden snowshed, just visible in the far right of the image.

This is Norden in the 21st century. The old wooden shed has been replaced with concrete. The line leading to the original tunnel across the summit has been abandoned. Twin tracks are now covered that lead to the new single track tunnel.

Blasting near the summit continued throughout the summer of 1867. On August 30, the original summit tunnel was holed through, with several more months required to prepare it for ties and rails. East of the tunnel, on the downslope toward Truckee, the route was carved into the north face of Mount Judah. Several hundred feet below, the pristine waters of Donner Lake watched quietly. A route on the other side of the lake (one eventually chosen by I-80) would have been shorter but almost 50 percent more expensive.

The tracks on the north side of Mount Judah lay exposed to the absolute worst of the winter storms, and it quickly became apparent that snow removal on this section of the line would be a monumental undertaking. The railroad thus constructed a multi-mile snow shed over the tracks, wooden at first, later replaced with concrete. Traveling through this long shed was like rolling through a tunnel; passengers could only catch glimpses of the the spectacular scenery below through the occasional slates in the sheds.

The snowshed on the north face of Mount Judah (1982).

A westbound manifest has come out of the snow shed on the north face of Mount Judah and is crossing one of the "Chinese Walls" constructed by the laborers who made the railroad possible.

Same train entering the snow shed protecting the east portal of the original tunnel.

Donner Summit.

The view is looking south at the north face of Mount Judah.

The original tunnel at Donner Summit and the tracks on the north face of Mount Judah were maintenance headaches from the very beginning. So at the beginning of the 20th century, SP proposed construction of a second tunnel on a new alignment that would lower elevation, cut several miles off the journey and provide significantly more protection from winter storms. One proposed bore would have been 18 miles long, roughly from Cisco to Truckee!

Work on the new tunnel began in 1923, and the bore opened for traffic on September 19, 1925 -- the third-longest rail tunnel in the United States at 10,325 feet, 132 feet lower than the original tunnel and 1.29 route miles shorter.

Workers quickly named the new tunnel the "Big Hole." Both tunnels were used until SP (under Rio Grande ownership and control) abandoned the original bore and the tracks using it. Today (July 2026) you can hike through the abandoned tunnel and down the snowsheds on the northern face of Mount Judah.

A short eastbound mixed freight exits the snowshed protecting the west portal of the Big Hole (Tunnel 41 to the railroad). The two tracks converge inside the shed.

Eastbound stacks are entering the Big Hole. In the background, the short mixed train shown above is preparing to enter the Norden snow shed. The hike to take this image was taxing.

After assuming control of the Southern Pacific and merging it with the Union Pacific in 1901, Edward Harriman embarked on several reconstruction projects to streamline the SP. One involved double-tracking the original single track line over Donner Summit. The first segment was from Rocklin to Colfax, completed in 1911; the second from Colfax to Blue Canyon opened December 10,1914. The First World War and litigation to force the UP to disgorge the SP delayed completion of the third phase until the mid-1920s. This last phase included the construction of eight tunnels, including Tunnel 41.

All tunnels were bored through granite, and all were located in the area of heaviest snowfall. The orignal summit tunnel had been dug with black powder, mules, shovels and the heavy labor of the Chinese work crews. By 1923-25, however, mechanized equipment made tunnel construction faster and much safer.

Westbound Amtrak exiting the Big Hole.

Westbound BNSF stacks.

More Amtrak.

The east portal of the Big Hole is isolated and may be reached by a multi-mile hike through the abandoned snow shed on the north face of Mount Judah or else by a multi-hour drive over primitive forest service roads. Your author tried the latter once but gave up after about two hours of getting lost and retracing his steps. So he has no images of the east portal.

Past the east portal the tracks rejoin the original alignment and follow a huge double horseshoe down the mountainside into Truckee.

The name "Truckee" comes from a Paiute Indian guide who helped thousands of emigrants in the 1840's and 50's across Nevada's barren Great Basin. The guide would often shout: "Trokay!", meaning that everything was clear ahead.

The emigrants mistakenly assumed that Trokay was the guide's name, and residents of the small settlement at Corburn's Station changed the name to Truckee to honor the Paiute who help so many on their journey westward.

End of Part One

To see my other posts, go to waltersrail.com.

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WaltersRail

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Better Late Than Donner (Part One)

The Author