Lansford Warren Hastings (1819â€"1870) was an American explorer and
Confederate soldier. He is best remembered as the developer of
Hastings Cutoff, a claimed shortcut to California across what is now
the state of Utah, a factor in the Donner Party disaster of 1846. He
was a Major in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil
War.Born to Dr. Waitstill and Lucinda (Wood) Hastings in Mount Vernon,
Ohio, he was a descendant of Thomas Hastings who came from East Anglia
in England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. Hastings was
trained as a lawyer. In 1842, he traveled overland to Oregon. While
there, he briefly represented Dr. John McLoughlin, preparing his land
claim near Willamette Falls and surveying Oregon City, Oregon (which
would become the first incorporated city west of the Rocky Mountains).
He left in the spring of 1843 for Alta California, a sparsely
populated province of Mexico. By the time he returned to the United
States in 1844, he had decided to help to wrest California from Mexico
and establish an independent Republic of California, with himself
holding high office.[citation needed]Hastings wrote The Emigrants'
Guide to Oregon and California to induce Americans to move to
California, hoping they could effect a bloodless revolution by sheer
numbers. He described California in glowing terms and gave practical
advice to overland travelers. In his book he wrote: "The most direct
path would be leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east of
Fort Hall; thence bearing west-south west, to the Salt Lake; and
thence continuing down to the bay of San Francisco." (Hastings, pp.
137â€"138). Hastings wrote this statement before he had traveled the
route himself, and he was unaware of the difficulties in crossing the
Wasatch Range and the salt flats of western Utah. His first attempt
was only from Salt Lake City to Fort Bridger, which he did in mild
weather, without time constraints, and without ever attempting to
cross the desert portion. Afterward, he eagerly spread the word that
his overland route was faster and better than any other. According to
historian Thomas F. Andrews, "It was Hastings’s renown as an author
and trail leader, coupled with his presence on the trail…that helped
persuade the [Donner] emigrants to undertake the cutoff that now bears
his name." Hastings's dream of empire soon collapsed when California
was conquered by the United States military during the
Mexicanâ€"American War. In 1848, Mexico ceded California to the United
States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Lansford Hastings Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter