In the busy summertime, the park's campground is bustling with families. We offer programs such as Junior Rangers, nature hikes and history hikes, and the ever-popular campfire programs at our newly refurbished campfire center. For a program schedule, click here.
The parks' day use and picnic area are excellent starting points for day hikes. 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.
Pine and fir forests
The forest surrounding Donner Memorial State park is made up primarily of lodgepole pine, Jeffrey pine and white fir. Because we're at nearly 6,000 feet in elevation, there is no poison oak. You may see deer, squirrels, chipmunks, porcupines, raccoons, beavers and a wide variety of birds while visiting us.
In and near the park are fascinating traces of the geologic process that shaped this portion of the Sierra Nevada. Rounded, smooth-surfaced rock outcrops are the result of giant bubbles of molten rock that cooled and hardened as they rose up into the earth's surface (called "granitic intrusions"). More recently, erosion has exposed that granite bedrock. The Sierra's steep eastern face, which was such a formidable barrier for 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. Throughout much of the last million years, glaciers dominated the crest of the Sierra Nevada. One of them carved out the Truckee Basin, where the park is located, depositing gravel and some huge boulders in what is now a thickly forested area. When the glacier retreated, it left behind a terminal moraine of loose soil and gravel that blocked the creek channel and resulted in the formation of Donner Lake.