3-021-452 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Central Pacific Railway, North America: Donner Lake, 1868. 'The chief links in the vast system of railway communication, which will soon connect the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the great American Republic together, are the "Union Pacific Railway," extending 1600 miles...Its course westward passes through a wild and almost uninhabited country to the Rocky Mountains...We have engraved [an illustration] of the scenery traversed by this railway,...supplied by Mr. Geo. E. Grey, the consulting engineer, [showing the view]... from the summit of Donner Pass, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, looking eastward. Donner Lake lies below, and the Washoe silver-mining regions are seen in the distance. This lake is a beautiful sheet of water supplied perpetually by the melting snows of the Sierra, It is about one mile wide and five or six long, and lies at an elevation of about 6000 ft. above the level of the sea. The Donner Pass is a depression in the Sierra Nevada (though 7043 ft. above the sea) which the Central Pacific Railroad Company have selected as the most suitable place to cross the mountain with their railway from the Pacific Ocean to the mineral regions of Washoe, Humboldt, and Reese River, thence to Great Salt Lake...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.