Truckee, California
- Lucian@going2paris.net
- 20 hours ago
- 7 min read
Charlottesville
March 8, 2026
I am filling in some blanks from my trip across the country.
The following information comes from Wikipedia.
Truckee is an incorporated town in Nevada County, California, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 16,729, an increase from the 16,180 counted in the 2010 census.
History
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. The Central Pacific Railroad selected Truckee as the name of its railroad station by August 1867, even though the tracks would not reach the station until a year later in 1868. 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
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 1,200 feet below the steep granite summit of the Sierra Nevada mountains and 90 miles 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 of 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. Although not the first to do so, Truckee gained renown for its successful expulsion of resident Orientals.
In 1891, lawman Jacob Teeter was killed in a violent gunfight with fellow lawman, James Reed (no relation to James Frazier Reed of the Donner Party). Constable Reed was among those accused of participating in the Trout Creek Outrage fifteen years prior.
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.[citation needed] 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.
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification system, Truckee has a humid continental climate (Dsb) with Mediterranean like characteristics. Winters are chilly with regular snowfall, while summers are warm to hot and dry, with occasional periods of intense thunderstorms. Its location near the Sierra Nevada crest at 5,899 ft provides conditions for winter storms to commonly deposit nearly a meter of snow in a 24-hour storm event and the occasional week-long storm event can deliver 2 to 3 metres (79 to 118 in) of snow. The National Weather Service reports that Truckee's warmest month is July with an average maximum temperature of 82.7 °F (28.2 °C) and an average minimum temperature of 42.4 °F (5.8 °C). January is the coldest month with an average maximum temperature of 40.9 °F (4.9 °C) and an average minimum temperature of 16.3 °F (−8.7 °C). The record maximum temperature of 101 °F or 38.3 °C was on August 28, 1915. The record minimum temperature of −28 °F (−33.3 °C) was on February 27, 1962. Annually, there are an average of 8.4 days with highs of 90 °F (32.2 °C) or higher and 239 with a high above 50 °F (10 °C). Freezing temperatures have been observed in every month of the year and there are an average of 228.4 nights with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower – seven more than Fairbanks and only eight fewer than Nome – but only 6.0 nights with lows of 0 °F (−17.8 °C) or lower and 15.6 days where the high does not top freezing.
Normal annual precipitation in Truckee is 30.85 inches (783.6 mm); measurable precipitation (0.01 inches (0.25 mm) or more) occurs on an average of 87.0 days annually. The most precipitation in one month was 23.65 inches (600.7 mm) in December 1955, and the most in 24 hours was 5.21 inches (132.3 mm) on February 1, 1963. The wettest calendar year has been 1997 with 54.62 inches (1,387.3 mm) and the driest 1976 with 16.04 inches (407 mm), although the extremes by "rain year" are a maximum of 53.50 inches (1,358.9 mm) between July 1981 and June 1982 and a low of 15.91 inches (404.1 mm) between July 2000 and June 2001.
Truckee has an average of 206.6 inches (5.2 m) of snow annually, which makes it the fifth-snowiest city in the United States, while snow cover usually averages 28 inches (0.71 m) in February, but has exceeded 115 inches (2.9 m). The most snow in one month was 196.0 inches (5.0 m) in February 1938, and the most in a season was 444.3 inches (11 m) between July 1951 and June 1952. The maximum 24-hour snowfall was 34.0 inches (0.86 m) on February 17, 1990.
Demographics
2020
The 2020 US Census reported that Truckee had a population of 16,729. According to the Census, the breakdown of the town's population by race and ethnicity in 2020 was: 12,946 (77.4%) White, 3,128 (18.7%) Hispanic or Latino, 31 (0.2%) African American, 92 (0.5%) Native American, 275 (1.6%) Asian, 9 (0.1%) Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1,446 (8.8%) other races, and 1,930 (11.5%) from two or more races.
Per the 2021 American Community Survey, 50.3% of residents were male and 49.7% were female. 22.2% of residents were under 18, 15.9% were 65 or older, and the median age was 41.9 years. 8.1% of the town's population were people with disabilities.
There were 6,247 households, out of which 59.7% were married-couple family households, 18.8% had a male householder with no spouse present, and 12.5% had a female householder with no spouse present. The average family size was 3.07.
There were 13,374 housing units, of which 49.4% were reported as vacant and 50.6% were reported as occupied.
12.8% of Truckee residents had moved: 4.1% of Truckee residents had moved within the same county, 5.2% had moved from a different county within California, 1.1% had moved from a different state, and 2.4% had moved from abroad.[29]
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