The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness and extreme cold. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal.
About Donner Party in brief
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness and extreme cold. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived the ordeal. Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in California history, and in the entire record of American westward migration. During the 1840s, the U.S. saw a dramatic increase in settlers who left their homes in the east to resettle in the Oregon Territory or California, which at the time were only accessible by a very long sea voyage or a daunting overland journey across the American frontier. In early 1846, almost 500 wagons headed west from Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner party was slowed after electing to follow a new route called the Hastings Cutoff, which bypassed established trails and instead crossed the Rocky Mountains’ Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert in present-day Utah. Arguably the most difficult part of the journey to California was the last 100 miles across the Sierra Nevadas, with 500 distinct peaks over 12,000 feet high which, because of their height and proximity to the Pacific Ocean, receive more snow than most other ranges in North America.
After leaving Missouri to cross the vast wilderness to California, timing was crucial to ensure that wagon trains would not be bogged by mud rains, norifts in the mountains during the right time of year. In the spring of 18 46, George Reed Donner, 60 years old and living near Springfield, Illinois, was born. With a one-year-journ sojourn in Texas, he was about 40 years old when he died on May 12, 1846. At the rear of the train, the group of nine wagons containing 32 members of Donner families and their employees left on May12, 1847, containing 32 wagons and their families. The first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became trapped. The second relief party arrived four months later, on May 14, 1848, with the help of Jim Bridger and his partner Louis Vasquez in Blacks Fork, Wyoming. It was the second of two men documented to have crossed the southern part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, but neither had been accompanied by wagons. The third relief party was a scant supply station run by Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez in Black Fiber, Wyoming, and it arrived on May 15, 1849. The last relief party came on May 16, 1851.
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This page is based on the article Donner Party published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
