Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

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In 1846, the nation was turning 70. Herman Melville and Walt Whitman were 27, Lincoln was 37. The first telegraph lines were up and humming. California was still part of Mexico, bu t already faint parallel lines—wheel tracks left by emigrant wagon trains—marked the California Trail. Close to half a million emigrants would cross the plains before completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, but in July, 1846, there were only 800 Americans in California, and the routes across the Continental Divide and the Sierra Nevada were not yet well established. It was on the 20th of that month that the Donner Party set out for California from Little Sandy Creek, Wyoming—enough time, they thought, to cross the Sierras before the winter snows fell. Show more