Eliza Donner lived many years more. She was born before the railroads, but lived to see the First World War, and died in just before her 80th birthday.
And thirteen years after that, a woman named Isabel Breen died in the South Bay, in With her death, the very last of the Donner Party survivors quietly left the earth. At Donner Memorial State Park, you can wander the site of the camps where the Breens, the Reeds and all those other families lived, and died.
You can explore the museum, and pose for photos by the huge Pioneer Monument that stretches over 20 feet into the blue Truckee sky.
This massive statue was erected in the warm sun of summer in In summer, Donner Lake hums with the sound of campers and holidaymakers. But for a long time, nobody was able to work out which cabin that was. When they built Interstate 80 in the s, they excavated another cabin site too. That left one more place, hiding in plain sight. Meaning that buried under this landmark — the one that every visitor to this place poses for photographs in front of — is very probably a mass grave. Palmer says that cadaver dogs trained to detect the presence of human bodies have reacted to it in a way that leaves almost no doubt.
We humans like to make meaning from things. We're compelled toward the idea that there are lessons to be found within history, even the bad parts, like quartz concealed in Sierra granite. The Donner Party wanted what many people have wanted throughout history: something better for them and their families. All the while, they knew that came at a cost for others — for the people whose land they were claiming for their own — and they did it anyway.
Knowledge that the Indigenous people who already lived here absolutely prized. As 81 people learned in the winter of , if you misjudge this landscape it can consume you whole. Search-Icon Created with Sketch. KQED is a proud member of. Always free. Over the years, people would ask me, 'What are you working on now? There are so many metaphors and elements of history that crossroad at this particular point from to The term Manifest Destiny was first coined in , by John L.
Many people, including politicians of course, and others interested in the commercial interests of the U. Read how a 2,mile trail helped define the American mindset.
We had a bellicose, expansionist president, James Polk , who schemed up a convenient war with Mexico, which owned much of the land we were to take in the West. What we did was gobble up nations. For me, there are no shining heroes or demons in this story. He and his wife, Philippine, came from Germany. He was a son of a Lutheran clergyman, and they decided to join this vanguard moving west.
He was a sharp-tempered fellow, who was sometimes abusive to his young, pregnant wife. He was also accused of plundering Indian burial sites. When the fourth rescue party reached him in April , he was the only survivor. He was reportedly found with a cauldron of cooked flesh and discarded bones. There were even rumors from some of the surviving children that he had taken one lad to bed with him to comfort him and the next morning the boy was dead, hung up on the wall of the cabin, like a slab of meat, and later eaten.
The journalists of the day feasted on all this. Sensationalized stories, often filled with outright lies, [nicknamed] Keseberg "The Human Cannibal. Throughout the many years that separate us from the Donner Party and its tragedy, people have singled out Tamsen as the true heroine.
There were many things that she did that are admirable. She liked to botanize, collecting specimens of plants along the route. For her, the whole trip was a learning adventure. The reason people flocked to Tamsen is because she totally refused, to her detriment and eventual death, to abandon her husband, George, the elder of the Donner brothers.
He had injured his hand near the time they were marooned in the snow. It became gangrenous, and that ultimately claimed his life. They moved to San Jose where James Reed became a miner, rancher, and land developer. He made a fortune in real estate speculation. Reed was active in civic affairs and served as sheriff and San Jose's chief of police. Virginia and Patty Reed both later married and each had nine children.
James Reed, who died at age 74 in , never publicly mentioned killing John Snyder in the argument on the California Trail. Editor's Note: This final installment is 40 in an exclusive series by Tahoe historian, Mark McLaughlin, tracing the actual experiences of the Donner Party as it worked its way into American history.
Copies of all 40 installments can be found here on Tahoetopia. Simply click on Donner Party. Log in. Header logo. OpenX Header Leaderboard. OpenX Small Header. Instructions on the map warned: "The most difficult portion of the whole journey is the passage of the California Mountains. Log in or register to post comments. Add comment Log in or register to post comments. Lake Tahoe Webcams. Caliente - Kings Beach. Tahoe City Golf Course Webcam. Once the party was trapped on the east side of the High Sierras, they killed and ate all the horses and oxen.
They boiled the hides to make a gelatinous concoction and picked all the marrow from the animal bones. They gobbled up any mice they could catch in their makeshift cabins. Then, one by one, they killed all their pet dogs and ate them.
Finally, desperate and delirious, they chewed on pine bark and pine cones. As a last resort, while watching their children and others die, they turned to the dead bodies buried in the snowdrifts.
It took the four relief parties more than two months to rescue the survivors. When members of the First Relief reached the camps it was said they saw no signs of human activity until a lone woman, gaunt from starvation, emerged from a hole in the snow. In the end, 41 people died and 46 survived. Five perished before reaching the Sierras, 35 died at the camps or attempting to cross the mountains, and one died just after reaching the valley at the foot of the western slope.
Many of the survivors lost toes to frostbite and suffered chronic physical and psychological disorders. Males succumbed at a higher rate than females and also died sooner.
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