Donner Party Departs Springfield: A Doomed Journey West

The Donner Party left Springfield, Illinois, on April 14, 1846, a group of 87 emigrants in covered wagons heading for California with the confidence of people who believed the West was theirs for the taking. Led by brothers George and Jacob Donner and businessman James Reed, the party joined the great migration of 1846 that sent roughly 1,500 Americans across the continent. Nothing about their departure suggested the horror that awaited them in the Sierra Nevada mountains seven months later. The fatal decision came at Fort Bridger in present-day Wyoming, where the party chose to follow the Hastings Cutoff, a shortcut promoted by California booster Lansford Hastings. The route was supposed to save 350 miles by cutting south of the Great Salt Lake through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Hastings had only traveled the route once, going east, and had never taken wagons through. The shortcut cost the Donner Party precious weeks as they hacked through canyons and nearly died crossing 80 miles of salt flats without water. By the time the party reached the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada in late October 1846, they were weeks behind schedule. Early snowfall trapped 81 survivors at Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) in makeshift cabins and lean-tos. By December, food supplies were exhausted. A group of fifteen, later called the Forlorn Hope, attempted to cross the pass on improvised snowshoes. Seven of the fifteen survived, some by consuming the flesh of those who died. Back at the lake camp, starvation forced the remaining emigrants to the same desperate measure. Rescue parties from California reached the camps in February and March 1847, finding survivors amid scenes that rescuers described with revulsion. Of the 87 original members, 48 survived. The Donner Party disaster became the most infamous episode in westward migration, a cautionary tale about the dangers of untested shortcuts and the thin margin between civilization and savagery that the frontier imposed on those who crossed it.