From K-QED.

Welcome to Part 2 of our Bay Curious Special on The Donner Party.

If you haven't heard Part 1 yet, you need to go back and take a listen to learn what happened

when 81 people walked into the Sierra in 1846, and many never came out.

Our quest was inspired by a Bay Curious listener. My name is Afifa Twill, and I want to know how the Donner Party impacted the Bay Area.

Now we'll explore what happened next to the people that survived the Donner Party

saga and how this disaster came to represent everything Californians wanted to forget. I'm

Olivia Alan Price. You're listening to Bay Curious.

Support for Bay Curious is brought to you by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, still family owned, operated, and argued over.

Explore their brews wherever fine beverages are sold and taste how trailblazing runs in the family.

Visit Sierra Nevada.com to find your new favorite beer today.

We left this saga in part one, with the very last of the Donner Party being rescued from the

mountains in April 1847. Here to pick up the story again is reporter Carly Severn.

In the place just outside Truckee,

where the Donna Party desperately built their makeshift cabins,

when they realized the relentless snows had them trapped,

there's now a museum set under the trees in a serene state park.

This whole place pays homage to the Donna Party, and to all those folks who came from the

Midwest and walked over these mountains in the 1800s to make new lives in California.

But back in 1847, after the last Donna Party survivors had been rescued from this place, people weren't quite so eager to remember.

When the snows of spring finally melted, the horrible things that had stayed buried under feet of snow up here at Donna Lake began to be revealed in full, says Donna Party Museum historian Greg Palmer.

So everything's laying around on the ground.

...