The hook
You can walk straight through the abandoned summit tunnel that Chinese laborers cut through Sierra granite by hand for the first transcontinental railroad.
01Why it's worth it
When the Central Pacific pushed the transcontinental railroad over Donner Pass in the 1860s, the worst job was the summit: boring Tunnel 6, 1,687 feet through solid granite, at fourteen inches a day. The crews were overwhelmingly Chinese, twelve thousand of the fifteen thousand men on the Sierra tunnels, and somewhere between five hundred and a thousand of them died doing it, in avalanches and blasting accidents, through winters spent living in tunnels under the snow. The railroad ran the line until 1993, then abandoned it for a newer bore under the mountain and left the summit tunnels standing empty. Now you can walk right through them. The long bore is dark and echoing and thick with spray paint, the snow-shed frames march along the cliff edge, and just east stands the China Wall, a seventy-five-foot dry-stone wall the same workers laid across a ravine. From the top the ground drops away to Donner Lake. It's raw history you can put your hand on, and nobody bothered to put up a sign telling you it's here.
02How to experience it
The tunnels are at Donner Pass along old Highway 40 (Donner Pass Road) west of Truckee, about three hours from the Bay. The walk through Tunnel 6 and the sheds is flat but the ground is rough and unlit, so bring a headlamp and real shoes. The land is unmaintained and technically private, so go carefully and at your own risk, and know that snow closes the pass for much of the winter. The Rainbow Bridge and some Martis petroglyphs are close by.