Donner Party

A project to document the Donner party and their rescuers. Feel free to join in and help.

The Donner Party, or Donner–Reed Party, was a group of American pioneers that set out for California in a wagon train in May 1846. Departing from Independence, Missouri, they were delayed by a series of mishaps and mistakes, and spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the pioneers resorted to cannibalism to survive.

The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed by following a new route called Hastings Cutoff, which crossed Utah's Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The rugged terrain and difficulties encountered while traveling along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada resulted in the loss of many cattle and wagons, and caused splits within the group.

By the beginning of November 1846, the settlers had reached the Sierra Nevada where they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee (now Donner) Lake, high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran extremely low and, in mid-December, some of the group set out on foot to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the settlers, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train had become trapped. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived to reach California, many of them having eaten the dead for survival.

List of Donner party members:

• George Donner
• Elizabeth Graves
• James Reed
• Levinah Murphy
• Patrick Breen
• William McCutchen
• Elizabeth "Eliza" Williams servant to the Reeds

Resources & Additional reading:

• Wikipedia - Donner Party
• http://www.donnerpartydiary.com/survivor.htm (not available 7/26/18/pscoggin)
• page 369 st. seq. of The History of San José and Surroundings: With Biographical Sketches By Frederic Hall speaks of James Reed
• History.com - Donner Party
• History Stories - 10 Things You Should Know About the Donner Party. by: Evan Andrews, 14 Apr 2016
• Legends of America - The Tragic Story of the Donner Party. © Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated June, 2017. (2 pages)
• Mental Floss - 8 Facts You Might Not Know about the Donner Party. by Michael Wallis, 23 Jun 2017
• Seeker - What the Donner Party Ate in Final Days. by: Jen Viegas, 27 Nov 2012
• EyeWitness to History - The Tragic Fate of the Donner Party, 1847
  • This eyewitness account appears in: McGlashin, C.F., History of the Donner Party (1879, republished 1918): Hough, Emerson, The Passing of the Frontier (1920); Stewart, George R., Ordeal by Hunger, the Story of the Donner Party (1936).
• Utah State History - 1846: The Donner-Reed Party
• Donner Party Diary. by Daniel M Rosen