Donner Pass

Donner Pass is a mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevada, close to Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada. Its max elevation is 7,085 feet above sea level.

To get to the Donner Pass pioneers had to travel through several forts, including Fort Bridger and Fort Laramie. The trail to the pass also passes through the Ruby Mountains and the Salt Desert.

It was the site of a famous case of cannibalism—the Donner Party.

In the mid-1860s the Central Pacific Railroad built a portion of the first transcontinental railroad over the pass. Until the 1970s, Central Pacific's successor, the Southern Pacific Railroad, maintained a roundtable and service center on the pass.