Many times I thought of the "Forty-niners" as we saw the sign, "Overland Trail." In coming along the Lincoln Highway, we are simply traversing the old overland road along which the prairie schooners of the pioneers passed. How much heart-ache, heartbreak, and hope deferred this old trail has seen! I think of it as we bowl along so comfortably over a somewhat rough but yet very passable road.

                                         ---Effie Gladding, 1914

An 1877 Andrew Hill

painting depicting the

1844 Stephens-Murphy

pioneer party making

their way around the

same hill that drivers

go around today on

old Highway 40.

 

Hill took a gold medal for this painting in 1878 in Sacramento. This painting was purchased and placed in the California Pioneers Association of San Francisco, but destroyed by fire in the 1906 earthquake. Luckily, someone took this black & white photo of the painting prior to 1906, but the colors are lost forever.

(click photo for

full screen)

The same location 82
years later in 1926,
soon after the bridge
was opened.
The remnants of
the old road can

be seen in the

foreground.

 
The same location
another 79 years

later in 2005.

 
Tamrak Road around 1920

 

(when it extended out to the lake)

 

 

Above, two pre-1926 photos of the road on the section that is currently being illegally blocked

Below, "The Road Past Donner Lake" 1916

 

1915 color photos  (not colorized) by J. Waters

Below is page 48 of the surveyor's field book for the 1915 State Department of Engineering Survey of the old road,

found in Sacramento in Nov 2005. Click image for large view.

The photo below shows this same area as the survey page above, and was taken two months before the survey in 1915.

The surveyor was working east to west. Note the "cottage" on the left is 150' to the right of the road, and then the hotel is 426 feet beyond that point (closer to the photographer).. The big round sign is a Red Crown gasoline sign.

 

1865 photo of the Dutch Flat Donner Lake Wagon Road, within the 1 mile section that is being illegally blocked.

Lawrence & Houseworth photo

If you look here --->

you'll see the photographer's

covered carriage off to the side of the road.

It held a portable darkroom.

 

(click photo for

full screen)

 

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