The disastrous Donner Party expedition of 150 years ago is marked by a museum, T-shirts and a big statue at Donner Memorial State Park just off Interstate 80 at Donner Pass Road.
Trouble is, there were no Donners there.The state park features the cabin sites of the Murphy and Breen families, but not those of the Donners themselves.
George Donner was captain of the 90-person expedition that got snowbound in the Sierra and now bears his name.
The wagon-train journey from Springfield, Ill., has become the most celebrated 19th-century westward crossing because of its dire result. Half of those seeking a new start in California instead met their ends in a siege of starvation.
But Donner and his family actually camped six miles from the official memorial that most tourists visit. The Donners busted a wagon axle and camped at Alder Creek, behind the rest of the party at Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake). George Donner's chisel injury to his hand while trying to fix the axle became infected, and that held them back, as well.
They pitched crude tents around pine trees for their smaller party of 22 after the first big snowfall Oct. 28, 1846. The Donners ended up spending the winter there, eating a bear cub, ox bones and eventually one another. Half the party died.
If you're looking to mark the 150th anniversary of the expedition, the official memorial on I-80 has plenty of authentic Donner history. There's the big rock that formed the north end of the Murphy cabin. There's the statue honoring emigrant determination on a 22-foot rock base that illustrates the depth of the snow during that miserable winter.
The lakeside site is where Tamsen Donner made the painful choice to return to her dying husband, George, by the creek instead of shepherding her children to California with a relief party.
But the memorial has the air of a highway rest stop.
The Donner meadow at Alder Creek is just up State Route 89 - a short drive, but far enough to feel far more remote. Because it's a meadow - not a forest - the mountain view is more formidable, too.
Few make the detour, but it's an important supplement to the official memorial. That's where children, weakest and least able to understand the monstrosity, were fed human flesh.
"Father was crying and did not look at us during that time, and we little ones felt that we could not help it," Georgia Donner later recalled. "There was nothing else."
The U.S. Forest Service improved the creek site recently, with $3,500 worth of new signs along an 1,800-foot walking trail, with maps, quotations and narrative about the expedition.
One sign quotes an advertisement George Donner placed for teamsters for the trip.
"Come, boys!" it says. "You can have as much land as you want without costing you anything. The government of California gives large tracts of land to persons who have to move there."
Another sign quotes teamster John Baptiste Trudeu later lamenting "that camp of snow and suffering."
An older sign at the entrance still labels the meadow the "Donner Camp Picnic Ground." It's ironic and gruesome - an invitation by your government to munch sandwiches where people (by most accounts) resorted to cannibalism before starving to death.
At the same time, the meadow feels closer to the real Donner experience, the place where people endured bitter cold in tents that provided less shelter as the people ate more hides.
A huge, 500-year-old pine tree there was long thought to be George Donner's tent site. A plaque marks the spot. A charred triangle at the base conjures images of unholy meals.
But an archaeological dig in the early 1990s found no evidence of the Donners at the base of the imposing pine.
The new signs carefully debunk the legendary tree in a footnote, not in the main text. The tree that actually anchored the Donner tent most likely was cut down for firewood.
The dig did find musket balls, period coins, ground bones and other evidence that the Donner camp was 100 yards away - confirming that the meadow is the spot.
Officials opted not to mark the exact site to keep people from doing their own excavating.
Just as well to leave the site in peace.