It contains an article entitled, "Donner Party Survivor Dies. Alder Creek, California. The Breen family camped closer to present-day Donner Lake, occupying a cabin built by a migrant party that came through the area a few years earlier. Camped close to them were the Murphys, Fosters, and Pikes.
The Graves and Reed families camped in the mountains above Donner Lake, at the present-day site of Interstate The Donner Party was a group of families that set off overland for California in ox-drawn covered wagons in They planned a two-thousand-mile, five-month walk across the continent to new opportunities, but were trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by the terrible winter of About half died, and some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.
Their story has become a tragic icon of the American West. The nucleus of the party was from Springfield, Illinois, and consisted of the families of George Donner; his brother, Jacob Donner; the James Frazier Reed family; and their hired hands. The three families and their employees, traveling in nine wagons, "jumped off into the wilderness," crossing the Missouri River at Independence, Missouri, on May 12, At that time, thirty-three people were traveling together.
They joined a larger wagon train captained by William H. She died in what has been called the "Pioneer Palace Car," a farm wagon Reed had modified for her comfort. The members of the Donner Party sought land grants and a new start in California, which was then part of Mexico.
The first segment of their journey along the Platte was comparatively uneventful. They traveled about eighteen to twenty miles per day and had plenty of provisions that were augmented by fresh elk and buffalo meat.
There were few trees along the Platte, but the pioneers burned buffalo chips dried bison dung for fuel. Most of the emigrants walked; only the very young, very old, or very sick rode in the wagons. The party reached Fort Laramie, a trading post in what is now Wyoming, on June At the fort, James Reed told mountain man James Clyman that he was interested in a "shortcut" that would shave weeks and hundreds of miles off the trek to California. Rather than proceeding on the regular trail to Fort Hall, in what is now Idaho, the shortcut would take the emigrants through the rugged Wasatch Mountains, south of the Great Salt Lake, and then west across the Great Basin.
Clyman warned Reed that the shortcut would be dangerous, but Reed wanted to hurry to California to secure the best land grants and spoke to the Donner brothers in favor of the plan.
Clyman recalled Reed saying that, "There is a nigher nearer route, and it is of no use to take so much of a roundabout course. On the western slope of the Little Sandy River, in what is now Wyoming, they camped alongside several other overland parties. While there, the emigrants who had decided to take the alternate route, called the "Hastings Cutoff" after its promoter Lansford Hastings, formed a new wagon train.
They made a left turn from the standard trail en route to Fort Bridger, a trading post operated by the famous trapper James Bridger and his partner, Louis Vasquez. Bridger, interested in encouraging a route that would bring travelers to his business, told them it would be an easy trip.
Vasquez had a letter from Reed's friend Edwin Bryant warning Reed about the dangers of the cutoff but he failed to deliver the note. The Donner Party rested at the trading post and set off on the "shortcut" on July 31, In August , the Donner Party, by then consisting of eighty-seven people in twenty-three wagons, was traveling on the Hastings Cutoff, a presumed shortcut on the California Trail.
The cutoff had been promoted by Lansford Warren Hastings, who was guiding wagons on the trail ahead of the Donner Party. One of those advance wagons had fallen off a precipice in Weber Canyon, so the Donner Party pioneered another route across the Wasatch Range in Utah.
The mountain wilderness slowed their progress and by August 22, the exhausted travelers broke through to the Salt Lake Valley. While crossing the eighty-mile-wide, waterless Salt Lake Desert, James Reed's oxen unexpectedly stampeded. They stayed a week at Pilot Springs, east of the present Wendover, Nevada, in a fruitless search for Reed's cattle. Already worried about provisions, they sent two men, Charles Stanton and William McCutchen, ahead on horseback to Sutter's Fort for supplies.
The demoralized party, by then comprised of groups of scattered families rather than a single unit, trekked around the Ruby Mountains and rejoined the standard California Trail at the Humboldt River on September It was later calculated that the "shortcut" had added miles to the trip. They had become the hindmost party in the California emigration of ; pioneers who had been behind them all along were now ahead of them on the trail.
The party was also harried by Paiute Indians, who wounded the Donner Party's cattle so that the animals would be left behind and could then be butchered. Furthermore, on October 5, near what is now Golconda , Nevada, James Reed killed John Snyder, a Graves family teamster, in a dispute when their wagons tangled while ascending a hill.
After a standoff about whether to hang Reed, he was banished from the party. He traveled west on horseback with Walter Herron, one of his teamsters. Two days later, Mr. Hardcoop, who had no wagon, was abandoned on the side of the trail. The Indian raids on the party's oxen continued, and Mr. Wolfinger stayed behind the others at the Humboldt Sink to bury his goods.
To spare the animals, everyone who could, walked. Two days after the Snyder killing, on October 7th, Lewis Keseberg turned out a Belgian man named Hardcoop, who had been traveling with him. The old man, who could not keep up with the rest of the party with his severely swollen feet, began to knock on other wagon doors, but no one would let him in.
He was last seen sitting under a large sagebrush, completely exhausted, unable to walk, worn out, and was left there to die. The terrible ordeals of the caravan continued to mount when on October 12th, their oxen were attacked by Piute Indians , killing 21 one of them with poison-tipped arrows, further depleting their draft animals. Continuing to encounter multiple obstacles, on October 16th, they reached the gateway to the Sierra Nevada on the Truckee River present-day Reno almost completely depleted of food supplies.
Miraculously, just three days later on October 19th, one of the men the party had sent on to Fort Sutter — Charles Stanton, returned laden with seven mules loaded with beef and flour, two Indian guides, and news of a clear, but difficult path through the Sierra Nevada.
The caravan camped for five days 50 miles from the summit, resting their oxen for the final push. This decision to delay their departure was yet one more of many that would lead to their tragedy. Twenty-two people, consisting of the Donner family and their hired men, stayed behind while the wagon was repaired.
Unfortunately, while cutting timber for a new axle, a chisel slipped and Donner cut his hand badly, causing the group to fall further behind. Stanton and the two Indians who were traveling ahead made it as far as the summit but could go no further. Hopeless, they retraced their steps where five feet of new snow had already fallen.
With the Sierra pass just 12 miles beyond, the wagon train, after attempting to make the pass through the heavy snow, finally retreated to the eastern end of the lake, where level ground and timber was abundant. At the lake stood one existing cabin and realizing they were stranded, the group built two more cabins, sheltering 59 people in hopes that the early snow would melt, allowing them to continue their travels. The 22 people with the Donners were about six miles behind at Alder Creek.
Hastily, as the snow continued, the party built three shelters from tents, quilts, buffalo robes. At Donner Lake, two more attempts were made to get over the pass in twenty feet of snow, until they finally realized they were snowbound for the winter. More small cabins were constructed, many of which were shared by more than one family. The weather and their hopes were not to improve. Over the next four months, the remaining men, women, and children would huddle together in cabins, makeshift lean-tos, and tents.
Meanwhile, Reed and McCutchen had headed back up into the mountains attempting to rescue their stranded companions. Two days after they started out it began to rain. As the elevation increased, the rain turned to snow and twelve miles from the summit the pair could go no further. However, the Mexican War had drawn away the able-bodied men, forcing any further rescue attempts to wait.
Not knowing how many cattle the emigrants had lost, the men believed the party would have enough meat to last them several months. On Thanksgiving, it began to snow again, and the pioneers at Donner Lake killed the last of their oxen for food on November 29th. The very next day, five more feet of snow fell, and they knew that any plans for a departure were dashed. A few days later their last few cattle were slaughtered for food and party began eating boiled hides, twigs, bones and bark.
Some of the men tried to hunt with little success. On December 15, Balis Williams died of malnutrition and the group realized that something had to be done before they all died.
However, with only meager rations and already weak from hunger the group faced a challenging ordeal. On the sixth day, their food ran out and for the next three days, no one ate while they traveled through grueling high winds and freezing weather. One member of the party, Charles Stanton, snow-blind and exhausted was unable to keep up with the rest of the party and told them to go on. He never rejoined the group.
A few days later, the party was caught in a blizzard and had great difficulty getting and keeping a fire lit. Antonio, Patrick Dolan, Franklin Graves, and Lemuel Murphy soon died and in desperation, the others resorted to cannibalism. Only two of the ten men survived, including William Eddy and William Foster, but all five women lived through the journey. Of the eight dead, seven had been cannibalized. Immediately messages were dispatched to neighboring settlements as area residents rallied to save the rest of the Donner Party.
On February 19th, the first party reached the lake finding what appeared to be a deserted camp until the ghostly figure of a woman appeared. Twelve of the emigrants were dead and of the forty-eight remaining, many had gone crazy or were barely clinging to life. However, the nightmare was by no means over. Not everyone could be taken out at one time and since no pack animals could be brought in, few food supplies were brought in.
En route down the mountains, the first relief party met the second relief party coming the opposite way and the Reed family was reunited after five months. On March 1st the second relief party finally arrived at the lake, finding grisly evidence of cannibalism. The next day, they arrived at Alder Creek to find that the Donners had also resorted to cannibalism.
On March 3rd, Reed left the camp with 17 of the starving emigrants but just two days later they are caught in another blizzard. When it cleared, Isaac Donner had died and most of the refugees were too weak to travel.
Reed and another rescuer, Hiram Miller, took three of the refugees with them hoping to find food they had stored on the way up. Soon after rescuers reached surviving members of the Donner Party on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada in February , the public was bombarded with grisly details about how the snowbound pioneers had resorted to cannibalism when their food supply ran out. Thanks to Known for their support of a strong national government, the Federalists emphasized commercial and diplomatic harmony with Founded in as a coalition opposing the extension of slavery into Western territories, the Republican Party fought to protect the rights of Live TV.
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