Donner Party Survivors Were Rescued on This Day in 1847 After Weeks of Frigid Conditions, Starvation and—Eventually—Cannibalism
Bad luck and poor decisions turned the already dangerous trek from Missouri to California into a fatal affair for roughly half of the Donner-Reed party
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For the surviving members of the Donner and Reed families, nearly four months of starvation, death and cannibalism in the Sierra Nevada came to an end on February 19, 1847, when a team of rescuers finally reached them.
The rescue marked the end of a long and brutal journey for the two families, who had started their trek on the Oregon Trail in the spring of 1846, when 60-year-old George Donner and 45-year-old James Reed packed up their families and embarked with some other pioneers on what should have been a four- or six-month-long journey from Independence, Missouri, to California.
By nature, the Oregon Trail was a long and difficult trek, with stretches through the Sierra Nevada often proving the most challenging. Participants in the Donner-Reed journey had an even more difficult time from the very start. Women, children, senior citizens and two individuals sick with tuberculosis slowed the wagon train down.
The families then made what would prove to be a fatal error. Instead of following the original path of the Oregon Trail, which went through Idaho’s Snake River Plain, they followed a “cutoff” popularized by Lansford Hastings, a migrant who had previously made the journey out west. Hastings recommended a more “direct” route that cut through Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert and the Wasatch Mountains.
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The Hastings Cutoff was advertised as a way to speed up the trek by shaving off 350 miles. In reality, it added 125 miles to the journey and drastically slowed the pioneers’ progress. Stuck in the Great Salt Lake Desert in the heat of summer, the Donner and Reed families swiftly burned through their precious food, water and feed. The lengthier trek also delayed their arrival at the Sierra Nevada range, known as the hardest part of the voyage.
By November 1846—or as early as October 1846, according to some accounts—the Donner-Reed party had reached the Sierra Nevada. But they were quickly trapped by an early and brutal snowstorm that kept the pioneers from carrying on with their journey. There, in the desolate and frigid mountains, roughly 80 family members fought to survive for almost four months.
Just over half survived. In the four-month stretch from November to February, several individuals succumbed to frostbite, starvation and malnutrition. The pioneers resorted to eating boiled leather and tree bark, and, eventually, to cannibalism.
While the majority of the party was trapped in the mountains, a group of the strongest and healthiest men and women broke off, forming a party known as “Forlorn Hope.” Their goal was to cross through the mountains and find help for those they left behind.
Along the way, though, many of the Forlorn Hope members died in the harsh conditions, and they were the first of the Donner-Reed party to cannibalize the dead. Those who did survive eventually made contact with Miwok villagers who provided relief.
From there, four rescue missions set out to save the trapped Donner party. On February 19, the first rescuers made contact. With only limited resources, the best they could offer was guidance for the harrowing trip out of the mountains.
While this contact in February 1847 offered a glimmer of hope, it was far from the end of the Donner Party’s journey. It would take until April 1847 for the last survivor to be brought to safety. The Donner family was devastated, with its surviving children left as orphans. Of the 81 original members of the Donner-Reed party, just 45 survived the winter.
Although the Donner-Reed party’s time on the Oregon Trail was filled with suffering, their story did little to slow westward migration. Some of the party’s survivors even pushed for further migration during the remainder of their lifetimes. To this day, portions of the highway that runs across the doomed party’s path occasionally close due to intense snowfall.
