The Donner Party

Time stranded: 7 days

Distance traveled: approximately 1,500 miles

Terrain types: Plains and mountains

Deaths: 35 – 50

Situation ended: Made it to safety

Location: Independence, Missouri to California

The Donner party was a group of American pioneers who set out as part of a 500-strong train of wagons that were emigrating to California from the East Coast. During the 1800s there was no such thing as the Panama Canal and the only way to get from the East Coast to the West was to either take a ship around the southern tip of South America and back up again or to walk. Since taking a ship was far too expensive and not practical for farm animals, the average person would have to walk. All these people wanting to travel such a huge distance eventually became organized into a yearly expedition, an event that followed a set route at a set time and allowed anyone who felt like it to join. Sometimes the chain of people would stretch for many miles and some years contained over 1,000 wagons.

The story of the Donner party begins in May of 1846 in the town of Independence, Missouri where the Donner party was waiting for the expedition to pass through. There were about 500 wagons in the main bulk of the expedition that year and the 1,500 mile (2,414.02 km) trip was expected to last for between 4 and 6 months. When people left the east side for the west they had to leave everything behind which is believed to be the reason the Donner family were so late in joining the caravan. For some unknown reason, the Donner family along with several other people were not able to join the main body of the caravan and instead became the very last group of people on that year’s expedition.

The plan was to follow the Oregon Trail towards the continental divide, averaging about 15 miles (24.14 km) a day, which would allow them to catch up with at least part of the caravan. This didn’t quite go as planned, and it didn’t take long before they realized they were going to be on their own for the entire trip.

Along the route, there are a number of forts that the caravan can check into for safety and fresh water. These forts are quite spaced out but act as navigational aids so people can stay on track. They were also a place where people at the front could send letters to warn the rest of the caravan in case something came up.

On the 12th of July the Donners, who were travelling with another family called the Reeds along with some other individuals received one of these letters. It stated that there was a shortcut across the mountains the group could use to save time and rejoin the main caravan, and not wanting to get stuck in the wilderness when winter came they thought it was the best thing to do.

On July 20, the Donner party reached the Little Sandy River, which was the point where they had the choice to follow the established route towards Fort Hall or turn off towards Fort Bridger which was the new route they heard of in the letter.

Most of the wagon train decided to stick to the known route, but the Donner and Reed families, already more than fed up with the journey decided to try the new route in the hope it would be faster. They turned off with a small group of other people and headed for the shortcut known as the “Hastings Cutoff”. Unfortunately, another member of one of the forward groups scouted this new route properly and found it not to be any were as easy as previously claimed, so he decided to write letters to the forts along the route of the main expedition to warn them not to take the shortcut.

The Donner and Reed group didn’t receive this information on time and had already gone past the last fort along the original route were the letter was sent. The group headed on and found out for themselves the shortcut wasn’t very short at all, and didn’t have a well-worn path for the wagons like the original Oregon trail did.

The shortcut they were taking made its way across the Wasatch mountains, where they managed to do about 1.5 miles (2.41 km) a day, with the stronger members of the group spending their time felling trees and moving boulders that had fallen over the path.

(Part of the Wasatch mountain range showing just how difficult its terrain can be)

It was at this point the Donner party was joined by the Graves family who were the last people to leave for the western migration of that year, and they were now officially the last party in the expedition. The group was now made up of 87 people, several dozen pack animals, and between 50 and 80 wagons.

After spending over 2 weeks crossing the mountains the party now ran into a giant salt lake. They knew this was part of their journey, but they heard it would take 2 days to cross the area that was supposed to be only 40 miles (64.37 km) wide, but 6 days and 80 miles (128.75 km) later the group finally made it. The crossing saw several oxen and horses break free and bolt into the desert, crazed from being so close to dying of thirst.

After making it across they found a spring on the other side and spent the next few days looking for their escaped animals and recovering from the trip. After that, the next plain they crossed without incident and the journey seemed to be getting easier.

They reached the Donner pass, which was named so after the incidents of this story, and attempted to make their way through, believing that the snow drifts were at least another month away. But of course, this wasn’t the case and the forward scouting members of the party made it to the summit of the mountain, but were then cut off by massive snow drifts and headed back towards Lake Truckee, warning the other members of the party on the way.

After making a few more attempts to get past, which all failed, they decided their only choice was to wait for winter to pass before trying again, so they set up camp at the lake, building 3 small log cabins.

At this point, food was already critically low, and even though one of the hunters in the group caught a bear within the first few days, all the other game seemed to disappear after that, most likely buckling down for the coming cold. Food was so desperate at this point that one member of the group charged another $25 for the carcass of one of his oxen that had starved to death, with that price normally fetching 2 healthy oxen.

Things got so desperate that the ox hides some of the families were using to waterproof their cabin roofs were stripped off and made into soup. A few members of the group left to try and find food in the wild but after a 4 day search returned empty-handed.

On February 18, a small relief group arrived at the lake but had next to no food with them. Promising to provide a more substantial relief effort they left for California on foot with some of the children and a few of the healthier adults, with the others remaining behind to look after their wagons. At this point, people were starting to starve to death and no one was familiar with lake fishing or winter foraging and spent entire days sitting in a leaking hut with nothing to eat and nothing to do.

The next relief arrived on March 1st but again couldn’t provide any food, and instead came to take a few more people on foot across the Donner pass. Several more members left in a small group and made it safely to California, but the remaining people at the lake were either too weak to make the journey or didn’t want to leave everything they owned.

The final relief mission arrived on March 14th, and up until this point only a few members of the Donner party had died of illness or accident, but this arrival would be entirely different. Some of the able-bodied adults left on previous reliefs and left their children in the care of other families with the idea of coming back with their own supplies.

This arrival saw that a number of survivors had starved to death, with one of the relief members being informed his son had died from starvation a few days earlier and some of the group were forced to eat him, with the father swearing to kill them if he ever saw them in California.

Even though only a few of the group died and were eaten at the lake, more of them died on the way over the mountain pass and onto the way point of the next fort. There were also several smaller groups that split off from the main Donner party to try and make it on foot, but many of these either starved to death or died from disease or accident.

Out of the original party, more than half of the people on it died. There are also a few more gruesome features to the story, such as a man named Keseberg who was found with a large pot full of human meat and various tales of theft and murder connected to him, but who’s to know what really happened on that lake in 1847. Keseberg was also officially the last person on the entire western expedition to reach the last checkpoint of Sutters Fort.