Any amateur historians on these groups who have knowledge about (or maybe were involved in) the fiber optic networks that currently run across Donner Pass in California? -- or can forward this query to people who might have knowledge?
Reason for asking: Over the past several centuries Donner Pass has been a major route across the Sierras and into California for many modes of communication and transit, including:
--Native American hunters;
--Explorers and emigrants on the California Trail in the early 1840s (including the Donner party, some of whom actually made it);
--Gold Rush fortune seekers in the late 1840s;
--The first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s;
--The first transcontinental highway (Lincoln Highway/Highway 40) in1915-1925;
--The first transcontinental airline routes in the 1920s;
--The Interstate 80 Freeway built for the Winter Olympics in 1960;
--Several major pipelines for petroleum products, beginning in 19??;
And today, a major set of fiber optic cables connecting California to the rest of the U.S. (For some winter-time photos of 7 foot tall fiber optic route markers on a ridge top above Donner Lake, cf.
There is also today an active Donner Summit Historical Society who would be very interested both in collecting more information about these cables for their very readable newsletter: and maybe even for someone to talk about this at their annual public Rendezvous Event, scheduled this year for August 13-14:
I'd be glad to be a transmission channel to this group, either via responses to this newsgroup or to siegman at stanford dot edu.