The Donner Party (sometimes called the Donnerâ€"Reed 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 1846â€"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 and sickness.The
Donner Party departed Missouri on the Oregon Trail in the spring of
1846, behind many other pioneer families who were attempting to make
the same overland trip. 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. The desolate and rugged
terrain, and the difficulties they later encountered while traveling
along the Humboldt River in present-day Nevada, resulted in the loss
of many cattle and wagons, and divisions soon formed within the
group.By early November, the migrants had reached the Sierra Nevada
but became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near Truckee Lake (now
Donner Lake) high in the mountains. Their food supplies ran
dangerously low, and in mid-December some of the group set out on foot
to obtain help. Rescuers from California attempted to reach the
migrants, but the first relief party did not arrive until the middle
of February 1847, almost four months after the wagon train became
trapped. 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 United States 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. Some, such as Patrick Breen, saw
California as a place where they would be free to live in a fully
Catholic culture; others were attracted to the West's burgeoning
economic opportunities or inspired by the idea of manifest destiny,
the belief that the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
belonged to European Americans and that they should settle it. Most
wagon trains followed the Oregon Trail route from a starting point in
Independence, Missouri, to the Continental Divide of the Americas,
traveling about 15 miles (24 km) a day on a journey that usually took
between four and six months. The trail generally followed rivers to
South Pass, a mountain pass in present-day Wyoming which was
relatively easy for wagons to negotiate. From there, pioneers had a
choice of routes to their destinations. Donner Party Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter