On February 2, 1847, the first woman of a group of pioneers commonly known as the Donner Party dies during the group’s journey through a Sierra Nevada mountain pass. The disastrous trip west ended up killing 42 people and turned many of the survivors into cannibals.

Soon after rescuers reached surviving members of the Donner Party on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada in February 1847, the public was bombarded with grisly details about how the snowbound pioneers had resorted to cannibalism when their food supply ran out.

Included in the group were two Miwok Indians, Luis and Salvador, who had been sent by early California pioneer John Sutter to help the trapped emigrants. Eventually, when even the (dead) human sources of food dwindled, it was decided to kill the Miwoks. Both men were shot and their flesh consumed.

Forty-two of the 89 members died. Direct descendants of the party’s Donner, Reed, Breen, Graves and Murphy families will attend the event. Family historians will talk about the families and what happened to survivors. More than 100 family members will attend each reunion.

The members of the Donner Party were not prepared for travel conditions in the desert surrounding the Great Salt Lake. Their wagons were bogged down by the sand, as their wheels would not turn properly and kept getting stuck.

But what happened to them after their rescue in 1847? Unknown/Wikimedia CommonsJames and Margaret Reed managed to survive the Donner Party disaster with their four children. In the spring of 1847, the last rescue party finally reached the desperate remains of the Donner Party.

five months

Within half an hour the young man was dead. Feelings against Reed ran so strong, some wanted to hang him. But others spoke out in his behalf. A compromise was struck, and he was banished.

The winter of 1951-52 dumped nearly 65 feet of snow on Donner Summit and the snowpack reached 26 feet deep, the greatest depth ever recorded there. For three days rescuers battled heavy snow and 100 mile per hour winds.

The Breens were the only Catholic family in the Donner party and prayers were said aloud regularly in that cabin night and morning.

The Donner Party missed making its Sierra crossing by about two days. On the way from the east, the group had taken a shortcut that turned out to be 125 miles, and at least two weeks longer, than the then established, Oregon and California Trails.

Lansford Hastings

It is there that the Reed, Donner and other families decided to take the Hastings Cutoff. The Cutoff would shave 300 miles off their journey, rejoining the California Trail on the other side of the Sierra’s.