In early November 1846 the Donner Party found the route blocked by snow and was forced to spend the winter on the east side of the mountains.

The passengers and crew were stranded for three days until the nearby highway could be plowed sufficiently for a caravan of automobiles to carry them the few miles to Nyack Lodge.

[7] In the spring of 1868, the Sierra Nevada were finally overcome by the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR), after almost three years of sustained drilling and blasting through granite, with the successful completion at Donner Pass of its 1,659-foot (506 m) Tunnel #6 (a.k.a.

Following a route first surveyed and proposed by CPRR's original Chief Engineer, Theodore D. Judah (1826–1863), the construction of the four tunnels, several miles of snowsheds, and a hand-crafted stone retaining wall 75-foot tall (a.k.a.

[9] Principally designed and built under the personal, often on-site direction of CPRR's Chief Assistant Engineer, Lewis M. Clement (1837–1914),[10] the original (Track 1) summit grade remained in daily use from June 18, 1868, when the first CPRR passenger train ran through the Summit Tunnel, until 1993 when the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) (which operated the CPRR-built Oakland-Ogden line until its 1996 merger with the Union Pacific Railroad (UP)) abandoned the 6.7 mile (10.7 km) section of Track #1 over the summit running between the Norden complex (Shed 26, MP 192.1) and the covered crossovers in Shed #47 (MP 198.8), one mile east of the old flyover at Eder.

All traffic has since operated over the Track #2 grade crossing the summit 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Donner Pass through the 10,322-foot (3,146 m)-long Tunnel #41 running under Mount Judah between Soda Springs and Eder.

[11] In conjunction with major ongoing upgrades and expansions being made to the Port of Oakland in order to better accommodate the rapidly growing North American trade with Asia and the Pacific, the cooperation of UP, the Port's principal rail partner, has been sought to "construct a second track and raise tunnel clearances over Donner Pass for container trains linking California with the rest of the country.

Euer Saddle, along with a nearby park on the south side of the freeway, are commonly called "Donner Summit" by the state of California.

However, its fame and quick access from Old Highway 40 or nearby Sugar Bowl Ski Resort has led to a large number of avalanche fatalities, including that of professional snowboarder Jamil Khan.

It is also featured in the National Geographic Channel series Hell on the Highway, which focuses on the towing and recovery companies working the region.