The Donner Party: Wagon Train Tragedy

 

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Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: The Donner Party: Wagon Train Tragedy

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re off on another of our ill-advised journeys—this time across the US Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846, by wagon.

A few years back, my family made a cross-country move from the US midwest to the west coast, following routes pioneers took 175 years earlier. We made the drive in 3 (long) summer days. For settlers like the Donner Party, it could take up to 6 months, from spring to fall. Most importantly: our route was lined with grocery stores and restaurants. For the Donner Party, the lack of food would be famous—and fatal.

The Donner Party of pioneers, named for its leader George Donner, was doomed by a late start, interpersonal conflict, and one spectacularly bad decision: trusting two strangers about an untested “shortcut” on the way to California that turned out to be anything but short.

The last obstacle on the trail was the Sierra Nevada range: major mountains with wicked winters. The Donner Party, attempting the crossing far too late in the season, met early blizzards that dropped 20 feet of snow. Eighty-seven men, women, and children were stranded, miles from help.

Survival cannibalism is a tragic mainstay of wilderness and sea disasters. The focus, of course, is that people are eating other people, but to my mind what often gets overlooked is the incredible things people will eat right before they get to that point. The Donner Party ate shoelaces and horse bones boiled enough to be swallowed. Some children ate a rug. Eventually, they were desperate enough to eat their own cabin roofs, made of ox hides, leaving them without shelter.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

It’s not too late. Today 16,000 people live by the shores of Donner Lake, in a town called Truckee. There’s a railroad, and of course, restaurants. It’s human nature to wish we could go into the past and use modern technology to aid doomed travelers, shipwrecked sailors, or plague victims. A time travel story about bringing the Donner Party into modern-day Truckee would be fascinating.

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