A rare photograph of The Pioneer statue being unloaded or loaded into a rail car. The DeRome Foundry in San Francisco was hired to do the casting, transporting, and placing of the figure for $11,000. The statue still stands at the Donner Memorial State Park in Truckee.
Here is another hard to find photograph of the pedestal, built by J W Woods, who used local rock from Donner Lake to build the 22 1/2 foot base. Here we see the base without the statue, and the cornerstone that had been placed at the spot s a few years before. No one knows what happened to the cornerstone.
The men that built the pedestal.
That statue took 5 days to lift by rope, block, and tackle to the top of the pedestal. It was in place by May 25th, with a dedication on June 6th attended by 3,500 spectators.
We see the finished monument on the left, while T C Wohlbruck builds his park office building or “canteen service station” to the right. T C Wohlbruck was a pioneer in his way, by creating some of the first auto stops where one could get fuel and provisions. He acted as a caretaker of the property until the State of California took it over in the mid-1930s.
All photographs from Donner Summit Historical Society, Norm Sayler collection.
