The author visited this spot of melancholy
history in company with the vice-president of the great railway
line which here swings up so steadily and easily over the
Sierras. Bit by bit we checked out as best we might the fateful
spots mentioned in the story of the Donner Party. A splendid
motor highway runs by the lakeside now. While we halted our own
car there, a motor car drove up from the westward--following that
practical automobile highway which now exists from the plains of
California across the Sierras and east over precisely that trail
where once the weary feet of the oxen dragged the wagons of the
early emigrants. It was a small car of no expensive type. It was
loaded down with camping equipment until the wheels scarcely
could be seen. It carried five human occupants--an Iowa farmer
and his family. They had been out to California for a season.
Casually they had left Los Angeles, had traveled north up the
valleys of California, east across the summit of the Sierras, and
were here now bound for Iowa over the old emigrant trail!
We hailed this new traveler on the old trail.
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