Donner Memorial State Park is located in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains. Donner Memorial State Park offers the many summer vacationers opportunities for camping, picnicking, boating, fishing, water-skiing, and hiking.

In the winter, visitors can cross-country ski and snowshoe on trails and enjoy the season’s beauty.

Visitors are welcome year-round at the Emigrant Trail Museum and at the Pioneer Monument, built to commemorate those who emigrated to California from the east in the mid-1800’s.

Included in the museum are displays and information about one of the earliest pioneer wagon trains, the Donner Party, forced by circumstances to camp at the east end of Donner Lake in the winter of 1846-47, resulting in human suffering and loss of life.

If you are visiting the Lake Tahoe area, be sure to see the following Donner Memorial State Park and Donner Lake visitor attractions:

Public Boat Ramp -
While the park has no boat launching ramp, a public ramp operated by the Truckee Donner Recreation & Parks District is available in the northwest corner of Donner Lake. There is a fee charged for boat launching. For information call (530) 582-7720. The lake is open to both power and sail boats.

Fishing -
The park has over three miles of frontage on Donner Lake and Donner Creek. Although the fishing is not usually spectacular, the lake has some native kokanee and planted trout. A fishing license is required. (Many fishermen prefer to use the park as a base to visit nearby lakes).

Hiking Trails -
The park has about 2.5 miles (4 km.) of hiking trails. Park property in Coldstream Canyon to the south contains the alignment of the primary Emigrant Trail, which leads up to U.S. Forest Service and the Pacific Crest trails beyond the park. Maps are for sale at the Emigrant Trail Museum.

Camping and Day Use -
Located at Donner Memorial State Park is a campground of 154 sites and a day-use area along the lake with picnic tables, restrooms, a beach, fishing, and a lakeside interpretive trail that has 18 panels which discuss the natural and cultural resources in the area.

Emigrant Trail Museum -
The Emigrant Trail Museum, located at Donner Memorial State Park, takes about 1 hour to visit. It depicts the history of the area and the people who came into this part of the Sierra, including local Native Americans, the Donner Party, and builders of the transcontinental railroad. Postcards, posters, maps, and books about the human and natural history of the area are for sale at the museum.

Pioneer Monument -
Near the museum is the Pioneer Monument and the Donner Party’s Murphy family cabin site. Also starting at the museum is a self-guiding nature trail which is a one half mile loop. Nature trail guides are available at the museum and campground entrance station. Staff-led hikes, special feature shows, and campfires start in late June. Hikes, ranging from 1 – 2 hours, start at the museum at 10:00 a.m.

The park is located amid the pine and fir forests jut east of Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada. Surrounded by magnificent alpine scenery and directly adjacent to a beautiful three-mile-long lake, the park offers vacationers a wide range of recreational opportunities including camping, picnicking, hiking, boating, fishing and waterskiing.

The Emigrant Trail Museum at the park is open year round and includes exhibits about the human and natural history of this area.

The forest is made up primarily of lodgepole pine, Jeffrey pine and white fir. Because of its elevation, nearly 6,000 feet, there is no poison oak. Deer, squirrels, chipmunks, porcupines, raccoons, beavers and a wide variety of birds are commonly seen. In and near the park are some fascinating traces of the geologic process that shaped this portion of the Sierra Nevada. Rounded, smooth-surfaced rock outcrops are the result of granitic intrusions that welled up into the earth’s surface–giant bubbles of molten rock, cooling and hardening as they rose. More recently that granite bedrock has been exposed by erosion.

The Sierra’s steep eastern face, the barrier that faced the Donner Party and other California immigrants, was formed over the last few million years by the tilting up of a gigantic section of the earth’s crust. The huge granite block tipped up dramatically on the east and tipped down on the west to disappear beneath the accumulated sediments that form the Sacramento Valley.
Glaciers dominated the crest of the Sierra Nevada throughout much of the last million years. One of them carved out the Truckee Basin, where the park is located, depositing gravel and even some huge boulders in what is now a thickly forested area. When the glacier began to retreat, it left behind a terminal moraine of loose soil and gravel that blocked the creek channel and resulted in the formation of Donner Lake.

The park has more than three miles of frontage on Donner Lake and Donner Creek. Fishing is not spectacular, though the lake is planted periodically with catchable trout, and both trout and kokanee are sometimes caught. A valid sport fishing license is required. Many fishermen prefer to use the park as a base to visit nearby lakes. There is no boat launching ramp in the park, but a public ramp is available in the northwest corner of Donner Lake. The lake is open to both power and sail boats.

The park has about two and a half miles of hiking trails, and there are excellent trail opportunities in the neighboring Tahoe National Forest. Hiking information is available at the trail museum.