New Dig Is Set for Donner Site

TRUCKEE, Calif. — Archeologists will soon launch a major dig at the main Sierra campsite of the tragic Donner Party.

The project is expected to begin by mid-June at the site selected for a new $6-million museum in Donner Lake Memorial State Park.

A team of state parks archeologists will search for artifacts near the present museum on the east side of Donner Lake.

It will be only the second excavation of its scope at the lakeside location where dozens of the California-bound pioneers starved to death, said archeologist Susan Lindstrom.

“The excavations have been few and far between,” Lindstrom told Truckee’s Sierra Sun newspaper. “Who knows what could come up?”

The Donner Party became stranded by heavy snow in the winter of 1846-47 near present-day Truckee and split up between camps at Donner Lake and nearby Alder Creek.

About half of the 89 pioneers died and some survivors reportedly ate the flesh of their dead companions.

A major dig at the Donner Lake campsite in the 1980s turned up musket balls, bones, earrings and a religious medallion, Lindstrom said.

Many larger artifacts may have vanished soon after the Donner Party was rescued, she said.

“There have been quite a lot of disturbances in that area,” Lindstrom said.

Washoe Indians may also have left evidence of their 9,000 years in the area.

“The whole reason for doing this investigation is to see if they can locate some of the remnants,” said Hayden Sohm, superintendent for the Sierra district of California State Parks.

Artifacts found during the study may be displayed in the new museum, he said.

In January, another team of archeologists announced that it had found no conclusive evidence of cannibalism at the Alder Creek site.

But the researchers said the findings didn’t necessarily disprove the accounts of cannibalism told by rescuers and survivors.