The Donner Party: Mistakes Make for a Deadly Winter

The weather sweet spot for pioneers bound for California was mid to late-April, but as ill-fate would have it, the Donner Party—led by wealthy brothers Jacob and George Donner—failed to leave Independence, Missouri until May the 12th, giving them the dubious distinction of being the last major pioneer train of the 1846 season.

“I am beginning to feel alarmed at the tardiness of our movements, and fearful that winter will find us in the snowy mountains of California.”

Donner Party Member

Uncharted Territory

Most California-bound pioneers headed north through Idaho after reaching Wyoming, before turning south across Nevada. But the Donner brothers had fallen for a route proposed by a dishonest guidebook author named Lansford Hastings, who bragged of a shorter route across the Wasatch Mountains and the Salt Lake Desert.

Despite the fact that no one had yet traveled the “Hastings Cutoff” with wagons, the 20 wagons of the Donner Party set out for the Cutoff, even after mountain man James Clyman warned against such a divergence. For the brothers arrogance or ignorance, the decision would add nearly a month to the wagon train’s journey west.

Donner Party’s Winter in Truckee

By early November, 1846, the Donner Party reached the perilous slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a scant one hundred miles from their intended destination, until an early blizzard stalled them in their tracks, forcing a retreat to Truckee Lake to ride out the winter in a ramshackle assembly of tents and hastily-constructed cabins.

A month into their encampment, on December 16th, 1846, 15 able-bodied men strapped on homemade snowshoes and set off for help, only to wander aimlessly over the frozen landscape until they collapsed from starvation. After several in their party died from natural causes, the remaining men took to cannibalism, which allowed seven to make it to a ranch in California where they organized rescue efforts that wouldn’t commence until February of 1847.

The last to be rescued was Prussian pioneer Lewis Keseberg, who was located in April—half-mad and surrounded by the cannibalized remains of his former associates. Of the 81 pioneers who were forced to winter at Truckee Lake, 45 eventually walked out alive. The Donner brothers would lose their wives and four children for their poor decision-making, and of the dozen families that made up the wagon train, only two—the Reeds and the Breens—managed to arrive into California without suffering a single fatality.