Name Truckee's existence began in 1863 as Gray's Station, named for Joseph Gray's Roadhouse on the trans-Sierra wagon road. A blacksmith named Samuel S. Coburn was there almost from the beginning, and by 1866 the area was known as Coburn's Station. It was renamed
Truckee after a
Paiute chief, whose assumed Paiute name was Tru-ki-zo. He was the father of
Chief Winnemucca and grandfather of
Sarah Winnemucca. The first Europeans who came to cross the Sierra Nevada encountered his tribe. The friendly chief rode toward them yelling, "Tro-kay!", which is Paiute for 'Everything is all right'. The unaware travelers assumed he was yelling his name. Chief Truckee later served as a guide for
John C. Frémont.
Donner Party in
Donner Memorial State Park The
Donner Party ordeal is arguably Truckee's most famous historical event. In 1846, a group of settlers from Illinois, originally known as the Donner-Reed Party but now usually referred to as the Donner Party, became snowbound in early fall as a result of several trail mishaps, poor decision-making, and an early onset of winter that year. Choosing multiple times to take shortcuts to save distance compared to the traditional
Oregon Trail, coupled with infighting, a disastrous crossing of the
Utah salt flats, and the attempt to use the pass near the Truckee River (now
Donner Pass) all caused delays in their journey. Finally, a large, early blizzard brought the remaining settlers to a halt at the edge of what is now
Donner Lake, about below the steep granite summit of the
Sierra Nevada mountains and east of their final destination,
Sutter's Fort (near
Sacramento). Several attempts at carting their few remaining wagons, oxen, and supplies over the summit—sometimes by pulling them up by rope—proved impossible due to freezing conditions and a lack of any preexisting trail. The party returned, broken in spirit and short of supplies, to the edge of Donner Lake. A portion of the camp members also returned to the
Alder Creek campsite a few miles to the east. During the hard winter the travelers endured starvation and were later found to have practiced
cannibalism. Fifteen members constructed makeshift
snowshoes and set out for Sutter's Fort in the late fall but were thwarted by freezing weather and disorientation. Only seven survived: two were lost, and six died. Those who died were used as food by those who remained. The Truckee camp survivors were saved by James F Reed who had set out ahead after having been ejected from the party months earlier for killing John Snyder in a violent argument. Seeing that the group never arrived at Sutter's Fort, he initiated several relief parties. Of the original 87 settlers in the Donner-Reed party, 48 survived the ordeal. The
Donner Memorial State Park is dedicated to the settlers and is located at the East End of
Donner Lake.
Historical events Truckee grew as a
railroad town originally named Coburn Station, starting with the
Transcontinental Railroad. The railroad goes into downtown Truckee, and the
Amtrak passenger lines still stop there on the trip from
Chicago to
San Francisco. By the middle of the 1870s, roughly 1/4 of Truckee's residents were Chinese, many of whom moved there after the completion of the
Pacific railroad. Most lived in wooden shanties on or near the town's main thoroughfare. In 1875 a fire destroyed about 40 Chinese buildings along with some white-owned businesses, and as
anti-Chinese sentiment rose, white merchants attempted to segregate the Chinese residents. By 1876, some 300 of the town's residents, from workers to its most prominent citizens, had formed a local chapter of the Order of the Caucasians, also known as the
Caucasian League, to drive out the Chinese. Truckee gained statewide notoriety that summer, in an incident that was later called the
Trout Creek Outrage, when late one night a number of the group's members, clad in black, surrounded and set fire to two cabins full of Chinese woodcutters who had refused to leave the area. The vigilantes shot at the Chinese men as they ran out of the cabin, killing forty-five-year-old Ah Ling. Seven men were eventually arrested and indicted for arson and murder.
Charles Fayette McGlashan, local lawyer and owner/publisher of the
Truckee Republican, defended those accused. An Irishman named William O'Neal was the first to be tried. Despite convincing evidence against him, the jury acquitted O'Neal after deliberating for only nine minutes. The prosecutor decided to not try the others, given the pervasiveness of anti-Chinese sentiment. In October 1878, Truckee's entire Chinese quarter, located near Spring and Jibboom Streets, was burned down. The town's safety committee blocked the Chinese residents from rebuilding and ordered them to leave town and relocate across the river. Truckee reportedly had one of the nation's first mechanized ski lifts at the site of the Hilltop Lodge. The historic Hilltop Lodge was converted to a restaurant in the 1940s by the Crandall Brothers, and eventually became Cottonwood Restaurant and Bar. There were possibly two rope tows and a Poma lift, which was installed in 1954. At the same location there was a ski jump constructed during the early 1900s that was designed by Lars Haugen, a seven-time Olympic ski jumping champion. In 1993, Truckee
incorporated as a city. ==Geography==