The Donner Party

Daniel M. Rosen

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Donner Party, I created a daily diary of the Donner Party's journey. The daily information includes diary entries and quotes from original sources and histories. Now that the anniversary is over, I will keep the diary on the web for your research, education and enjoyment.

The Donner Party was the most famous tragedy in the history of the westward migration. Almost ninety wagon train emigrants were unable to cross the Sierra Nevada before winter, and almost one-half starved to death. Perhaps because they were ordinary people -- farmers, merchants, parents, children -- their story captures the imagination. The logs on this site contain the words of the participants from their diaries, letters and first-hand accounts, balanced by the perspective of later historians. The logs describe the locations of their trail and camps in detail so you can follow in the Donner Party's wagon tracks and footsteps.

One-hundred and sixty-three years ago this month, the emigrants trapped at the lake weathered the seventh and eighth storms of the winter. On the 19th they were heartened by the arrival of the long-expected relief party, right. This First Relief had been organized by settlers around Johnson's Ranch and Sutter's Fort. Seven men made the difficult journey on snowshoes through the deep snows, each man carrying 50 pounds of provisions. After distributing the provisions, the First Relief gathered up 21 of the emigrants who were strong enough to travel, mostly children, and headed back. John Denton, Donner friend and teamster, and three-year old Ada Keseberg died on the march out. Twelve-year old William Hook, Jacob Donner's step-son, died after over-eating at the relief camp at Bear Valley.
As the survivors were leaving Bear Valley, they met James Reed, who was leading the Second Relief. After his failed relief attempt in November, Reed had fought in the California Revolt, presented land claims in the San Jose area, and raised money for the Second Relief.
On the 13th, the Monterey Californian published the first account of the tragedy that contained most of the elements of the story as told to this day.

Read the Donner Party Diary:

View maps of the Donner Party's route (the Hastings Cut-off), the camps at Alder Creek and Donner Lake, and the route of the Snowshoe Party.

Read what happened to the members of the Donner Party, those who survived, and those who didn't.

Read about the salvage operations, and the remains of the Alder Creek campsites and the Lake Cabins.

Read reports from other Donner Party buffs who visited historic sites and made new discoveries, or re-discovered a bit of history.

Fortunate and Unfortunate Families

The families of the Donner Party faced horrible choices and made tough decisions the best they could. This winter several families have faced the terror of being trapped in the snows.

An Associated Press story on KGW NewsChannel 8 Portland reports that a couple heading from Portland, Oregon to their home in Reno, Nevada was trapped in the snow when their car's GPS navigation system directed them to a forest service road in the town of Silver Lake in southeast Oregon. Fortunately, they were well equipped for winter travel in their 4-wheel drive SUV, with food, water and warm clothes. After three days their GPS-enabled cell phone was able to get a signal and send their coordinates to a dispatcher. A deputy sheriff was able to reach them and pull them out with a winch. It appears that today's GPS is the equivalent of Lansford Hasting's The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California, and you still can't rely on a map, a book or a GPS alone.

According to reports by the Associated Press in Yahoo! News, a Medford, Oregon couple who went to cut a Christmas Tree in the mountains near the Oregon-California border was missing for two days (from December 1 to 3) after their all-wheel drive Subaru became stuck in snow. They were able to free their car by placing rocks under the wheels. As soon as they were able to receive a cell phone signal, they called the Jackson County Sheriff deputies who had begun a search for them.

Sources

On January 16, 1847, The California Star, Yerba Buena, reported a "most distressing situation" for "a party of emigrants." Ever since then, there has been no shortage of printed material about the Donner Party. The challenge has been to find accurate accounts. Often, the contemporary sources have not been the most reliable, such as the newspaper reports of the Relief parties and the first book published about the Donner Party. There have been almost as many fictional accounts as histories. The best selling "history" is actually told as a "dramatized" story. I have tried to rely on first-person accounts and well-researched histories, as listed in my bibliography of Donner sources.

Links to Other Donner Party Websites

Visit other websites for more information on the Donner Party, and related history websites.

What's New

Anacapa Entertainment is bringing its movie The Donner Party "based on the true story of survival," direct to DVD on January 26. You can preorder a copy from Amazon.com. The movie was a featured film at the Austin Film Festival. You can watch a clip at MovieWeb.com. You can see a special screening, with a talk by the director, on January 17 at 7:00 pm at Sugar Bowl (the ski resort just below Donner Summit). The movie was originally titled "The Forlorn" which was much more evocative of the story and more accurate (the movie is about the Snowshoe Party known as the Forlorn Hope, not a story of the entire Donner Party. It was written and directed by TJ Martin and stars Crispin Glover ("Beowulf" and "Back to the Future") as William Foster, and Clayne Crawford ("Wristcutters: A Love Story") as William Eddy. The issue of cannibalism is apparently on the minds of the filmmakers, as indicated by Crispin Glover's comment that "This historical incident is a fascinating portion of American history and rich material for an actor to sink one's teeth into. The pun is intended." Other actors include Mark Boone Junior ("Thirty Days of Night") as Franklin Graves, Jamie Allman ("The Notebook") as Eleanor Eddy, Catherine Black ("American Psycho") as Ann Fosdick, and Christian Kane ("Friday Night Lights") as Charles Stanton. The movie was filmed near the actual site and most of the actors are near the ages of the characters they portray, with the notable exception of star Crispin Glover, 48, playing 28 year-old William Foster. There have been two name changes, probably to avoid the confusion of having characters with similar names. Sarah Foster sounds like Sarah Fosdick but most Donner buffs don't notice because we refer to these two married women by the names of their families, Murphy and Graves. For the movie audience, the filmmakers call Mrs. Fosdick "Ann." William McCutcheon was changed to "Milt," no doubt because there were already two other Williams (Foster and Eddy): Based on stills from the movie website, the movie has a fairly realistic look, although none of the actors appear to have taken the extreme steps taken by Emile Hirsch who lost 41 pounds to play Chris McCandless in "Into the Wild." Celia Hayes, author of "To Truckee's Trail", a novel about the Stephens Party of 1844, reviewed the The Donner Party movie on her blog. She thought the movie looked realistic, since it was filmed on location, but in the name of drama they changed some events so the movie is not strictly accurate in historical detail.

Students at Elitha Donner Elementary School in Elk Grove, California, won a SEVA award in the 4th to 6th Grade category for their documentary video about their school's namesake Elitha Donner. Elitha was the daughter of George Donner. She survived the Donner Party and settled in the Elk Grove area after marrying Benjamin Wilder. The students interviewed experts, including California State historian Steve Beck from Sutter's Fort and historical novelist Naida West, author of River of Red Gold: The True Story of Donner Party Survivors. Ms. West lives on the property along the Cosumnes River east of Elk Grove where Elitha's house was located, and shows the site in the video. The SEVA awards are presented by the Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium. You can see the video on the SECCTV website.

Celia Hayes has published "To Truckee's Trail," a novel based on the 1844 journey of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party, who were the first party to successfully bring wagons to California over the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Party, guided by the Mountain Man Caleb Greenwood, met a Paiute Indian named Truckee who showed them a route over a desert to a river that flowed from a lake below a pass in the mountains. The Stephens Party were able to bring their wagons over Truckee's Pass, although they were unable to bring them down the mountains until the next Spring. Ms. Hayes tells their story with imagined diary entries from the participants in addition to the narrative. The book is available from the publisher BookLocker. The Donner Party followed Truckee's Route two years later, and their fame led to the renaming of Truckee's Pass and Truckee's Lake to Donner Pass and Donner Lake. Only the river remains named for Truckee.

Poet Shana Youngdahl has written a long poem entitled "Donner: A Passing." This is not a history in poem form, but the author's attempt to convey the emotional difficulty of the journey and tragedy. Each of the 25 poems describes a particular event, from leaving Springfield to the rescue of Keseburg. The poems are short and terse, similar to haiku, but they cause the reader to pause and consider the event. Ms. Youngdahl is originally from Paradise, CA and draws on the history and landscape of the west in her poetry. Her poetry has been anthologized is the book White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2007), and appeared in many national literary magazines including Shenandoah, Margie and Paper Street. She has received writing residencies from Norcroft and Devil's Tower national monument. She holds a BA in English from Mills College and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Minnesota. The book will be released June 13 and is available for preorder from Finishing Line Press as a chapbook (a short book of 26 pages).

The Metropolitan Playhouse in New York presented Mortal Decisions: a diary of the Donner Party, a one-man show written by and starring Stu Richel. Mr.Richel explores the questions surrounding the Donner Party, such as "why them?" and "how would I have measured up?" Mortal Decisions was premiered by Northside Theater Company in San Jose, California in 1994, and Mr. Richel performed it at the 150th Anniversary gathering in Reno, Nevada. The show ran on February 8, 9, 15 and 16, 2008.
.

Author and photographer Mark McLaughlin received the Northern California Publishers and Authors award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2006, for his new book The Donner Party: Weathering the Storm. a history of the Donner Party enhanced with research into the weather conditions. The Donner history is well written and includes numerous quotations from primary sources, especially concerning the weather. Among other topics, Mark addresses the evidence that the winter of 1846-47 was unusually wet, and the evidence that the snow depth at Donner Lake was 22 feet. He supplements the history with recent archaeology including the excavations at Alder Creek. The book is available from Mark's website. The website also includes climate data, snowfall and snowpack measurements from 1879, a collection of weather stories and other interesting information.

"The Donner Party," Ric Burns' 1992 documentary for the PBS series The American Experience, is now available on DVD, and for only $19.98, from Shop PBS. This is an excellent documentary that tells the story of the Donner Party using traditional sources and the then-new research of Prof. Joseph A. King. With readings from primary sources, and footage of scenes from the Trail and the cabins, this is an easy way to learn a lot about the Donner Party in 90 minutes of enjoyable viewing For other Ric Burns films, including The Way West, about the conflict between the Native Americans and the European, visit Steeplechase Films.

Thanks to the efforts of the Historic Donner Trail Committee a portion of the California Trail from Donner Lake to the Summit won't be abandoned as a public road. This section of the Trail saw less use after the discovery of Roller Pass in 1846, but it became the main route with the construction of the Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road in 1852, and later the Lincoln Highway. It decayed after the construction of US Highway 40 and became a "Jeep" trail until a landowner blocked it. A group of citizens has been fighting to preserve the old trail, and has stopped an attempt by Nevada County to abandon the road. The fight isn't over so visit the Historic Donner Trail Committee website to see how you can help.

Frankye Craig, Donner Party buff and author of the soon to be released book, "The Fateful Journey of Tamsen Donner" hosted a very successful Donner Party cross-country bus tour and symposium in October, 2006. The guided bus tour went from Independence, Missouri to Donner Lake The guides were Trail historian Ross Marshall and Donner Party historian Frank Mullen author of the Donner Party Chronicles. The commemoration and symposium was held at Boomtown Hotel near Reno, Nevada, and included a dinner with Frank Mullen Jr. as a story-teller. The commemoration included a bus tour of the trail from Verdi through the encampments and the summit. Thanks to symposium and tour organizer Frankye Craig, E-Mail: FrankyeEBD@aol.com, Phone: +1 (775) 747-1139

The Meadow Brook Theater presented "Devour the Snow", described as "a riveting courtroom drama drawn from the harrowing saga of the ill-fated Donner Party and encompasses the struggles of man vs. nature and man vs. man. One of the earliest recorded slander trials in American history this factual account follows Lewis Keseberg, a German emigrant and survivor of the tragic Donner Party expedition, and his suit for slander against several other survivors, who have accused him of being a grave robber and murderer. Directed by David Regal this production features award winning MBT actor Dennis E. North (Art, Of Mice and Men)." Actually Keseburg did not sue other survivors, he sued Ned Coffeemeyer of the Fourth Relief. The Meadow Brook Theater is on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. The performances ran from March 15 to April 9, 2006.

Cathy Ward and Eric Wright mounted an exhibition entitled "Destiny Manifest - Eden's End" at Cafe Gallery Projects London, The Gallery by the Lake, Southwark Park, London SE 16 2UA from 13th July to 7th August 2005. Destiny Manifest is a body of work inspired by a 7500 mile journey that traced the wagon roads of pioneer America. This journey was precipitated by a long-standing interest in the tragic Donner Party story. The exhibit comprised a 10ft by 40ft panoramic painting, sculptures, video projections and photographs. Visit the exhibition website for more information.

You'd have to be pretty brave to write a Donner Party Cookbook, and Terry Del Bene, Ph.D. is. His book combines a history of the Donner Party with recipes for meals similar to those prepared by wagon train emigrants. Mr. Del Bene is an anthropologist who has participated in archaeological digs and living history demonstrations of life on the Oregon-California Trail. So he knows what it takes to survive for five months on the Trail. He also knows what it takes to sell books, so in the proud tradition of previous Donner Party books he plays on the lurid aspects of the story. He includes sample invitations to a "Donner Party ... Lose Weight and Party All at the Same Time!" But other than the gory cover art and a few shocking statements such as "None of the members had any recipes for human flesh before starting their journey," the book is a solid history of the Donner Party and a solid cookbook of trail food. Recipes range from home style favorites such as corn bread and mince meat to camp-out specials such as antelope pudding and elk roast. The recipes use modern ingredients and methods, although Mr. Del Bene details how food was prepared in the 19th Century. Mr. Del Bene puts his own spin on history, such as calling Stanton's return and Reed and McCutcheon's attempted return "Relief Expeditions" when that title is usually associated with the parties that reached the survivors in the Spring, which Del Bene calls "Rescue Parties." But other than a few minor points, this is a well-researched history with endnotes to explain the more subtle points, even though Del Bene says in the preface that he "tried to refrain from the cumbersome system of footnoting." Available from the publisher Horse Creek Publications and from bookstores near you, including Amazon.com.

The Discovery Channel showed an episode about the Donner Party on its Unsolved History series. The Discovery Channel sponsored a dig at the Donner family campsites along Alder Creek, led by Oregon state archaeologist Julie Schabilitsky. The dig uncovered fire-cracked rocks, bone fragments and various artifacts. The bones exhibit evidence of butchering and are being analyzed at the University of Oregon to determine if they are human remains. You can buy the show on DVD or VHS.

You can see a National Park Service video about an earlier dig in 1994 by University of Nevada students, at the Have Fun with History.com website.

Michael Bitterman and T.G. Harper have written a musical Forlorn Hope: A Donner Party Musical, based on the writings of Virginia Reed and focuses on the Reed family. The play follows the Reeds from their hopeful sendoff in Springfield, Illinois, through their troubles on the Trail and entrapment at the Lake, to James Reed's rescue of his family. Michael Bitterman is a veteran Broadway composer.

Disney's "One More Mountain" is no longer available from Disney. This made-for-TV movie tells the story from Margaret Reed's viewpoint, and emphasizes her struggle to keep her family alive. Starring Meredith Baxter. When it was available, Disney charged $99 a copy.

Trails West Inc., is a non-profit corporation formed by volunteers dedicated to preserving trail markers on the California Trail through Nevada. Starting June 23, 2000 Trails West volunteers revised some signs, and relocated others, to reflect new research about the trail from the Humboldt Sink to Truckee. This created a controversy, as reported by Frank Mullen, Jr. in the Reno Gazette-Journal of June 10, 2000. You can also judge for yourself by examining maps and reading diaries describing the Truckee Meadows.

The preservation of the Emigrant Trail is an ongoing battle. The County of Washoe, Nevada considered a request by A&K Earthmovers to build a new gravel pit in the southeast Truckee Meadows area. The proposed plans include leveling a 200-foot knoll covering 68 acres that overlook the Emigrant Trail. According to retired high school teacher and trail historian Fred Horlacher, the gravel pit won't disturb the Trail, but it will be an eyesore. Read the complete story in the Reno Gazette-Journal of October 11, 1999,

Marian Calabra has written The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party, a highly regarded book for readers aged 9 to 12. Ms. Calabra tells the story from Virginia Reed's point of view, supplemented by other sources and historical details. The book has been critically praised for its sensitive handling of the issue of cannibalism, allowing young readers to understand the hard choices faced by the Donner Party. Includes a complete transcript of Virginia Reed's 1847 letter. My then 9 year old daughter read the book to prepare for her trip to Sutter's Fort, where she portrayed Virginia Reed. My daughter enjoyed the book almost as much as I did. Published by Clarion Books. Available at Amazon.com.

The 3rd edition of Winter of Entrapment by Joseph A. King was published posthumously. The late Prof. King offered a new perspective on the Donner Party, and explored the biases in the previous histories. The older editions are carried at most of the historical sites and visitor centers in "Donner County". The new edition is also available from the publisher: K&K Publication, P.O. Box 564, Lafayatte, CA 94549, phone and fax: 925-228-9205. The price is $13.95 plus $3 shipping plus 8.25% for California residents. Shipping multiple copies are $0.50 extra each. Discounts are available for retailers. Also available at Amazon.com

The Emigrant Trail Museum at Donner Memorial State Park, Donner Pass Road, 2 miles west of Truckee, contains displays about the emigrant trail over the Sierra, including artifacts from the Donner Party. Artifacts include William Foster's rifle, right, Tamsen Donner's china, and wagon parts excavated from the Salt Desert. The bookstore sells many of the histories of the Donner Party. The rangers lead regular Donner Party History hikes at least twice and some-times three times a week which start at 10:00 am in front of the museum. They are free to the public. For information and reservations for trips, call (530) 582-7892.

The Oregon-California Trails Association conducts numerous events to preserve the emigrant trail. Local chapters include Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, California/Nevada, and the Northwest.

Donner Party Descendants

The survivors of the Donner Party settled throughout California, and some became quite famous. As it happens, I used to live in Elk Grove, California, the final resting place of Elitha Cumi Donner Wilder, daughter of George and Mary Blue Donner. John Jameson, a descendant of Elitha Donner, has opened a Web page and is interested in keeping track of other Elitha Donner descendants.

For years Sue Montgomery managed the Denton Family Genealogy website. Her family continues her efforts, including a page on John Denton.

If you are searching for genealogical information about your family, the US Gen Web Project is an excellent source.

Send a Message

I am very much an amateur historian. You are welcome to assist in this effort. If you have any corrections, information, pictures, maps or other Donner memorabilia to share, let me know. If you want to send me a message about the Donner Party, or any other topic...E-mail me.

visitors since April, 2008

Thank you everyone