The pride of the extended Donner family was evident in this year's reunion banner: "Their Courage is Our Legacy: 160 years ago they came to this valley and struggled to survive...Today we return to honor them." Every ten years the descendants get together at Donner Lake to celebrate their family history.

New Museum
A speaker from the new museum being built at Donner Memorial State Park gave an overview of the plans, with photographs. Later Saturday afternoon, many attending made a pilgrimage to the east end of Donner Lake where emigrants' cabins and huts once stood.

For some present, it was their first visit to see the imposing monument at the park that honors pre-Gold Rush pioneers. The stone pedestal itself is 22.5 feet high, which according to popular legend, indicates the peak snowdepth at the lake in early 1847.

On Sunday morning, a large group carpooled to the Alder Creek Picnic Area for a presentation by Carrie Smith, a USFS Truckee Ranger District Archaeologist. She gave a presentation on the new information gleaned from recently discovered artifacts at the Alder Creek site. The Alder Creek campsite (located about 5 miles north of Truckee on Highway 89) holds special significance for the descendants. It is there-not on the lake itself--that the two actual Donner families struggled to survive.