Pg. 810-825. Donner Lake Till; Donner Lake glaciation. Formal proposal of name. Second of four glaciations in Lake Tahoe region. Preceded by Hobart glaciation (new). Succeeded by Tahoe glaciation. Relatively long interglacial separates the Donner Lake glaciation from the Tahoe. Till is recognized by a 4- to 8-foot soil with distinct A - B - C profile in which boulders are weathered to about same degree as they are in Hobart Till. Donner Lake Outwash rests on Pleistocene volcanic flow which has been dated at 1.3 +/-0.1 Ma. Donner Lake glaciation is probably much younger than this flow. At type locality of Donner Lake Till, the till overlies gravels (Prosser Creek alluvium in Birkeland, 1963) which are interpreted as being same age as dated flow. Age is Pleistocene (pre-Wisconsin).
Type section (of till): ground moraine exposed in east roadcut of U.S. Highway 89 just south of overpass over Highway 40 Freeway, in SW/4 sec. 11, T. 17 N., R. 16 E., [Nevada Co.], eastern northern CA.
G.B. Dalrymple, 1964, Dissert. Abs., v. 24, no. 10, p. 4142, mentions Donner Lake (pre-Tahoe) glaciation in report on potassium-argon dates and Cenozoic chronology of the Sierra Nevada. Basalt underlying outwash correlated with Donner Lake glaciation has been dated as 1.3 Ma.

Source: US geologic names lexicon (USGS Bull. 1350, p. 217).