But as I began to investigate the Donners, I realized that research into the tragedy was alive and well, and that there were many important aspects of the story that were still unfolding.
In the summer of 1846, 87 pioneers, many of them children accompanying their parents, set out from Independence, Missouri, for the California coast, eventually taking what might qualify as the most ill-advised shortcut in the history of human travel. Dreamed up by a promoter who had never taken the route himself, the Hastings Cutoff turned out to be 125 miles longer than the established route to the West Coast. It was also a far more treacherous trek, forcing the travelers to blaze a fresh trail through the Wasatch Range before sending them on an 80-mile hike across arid lowlands that transitioned into Utah’s Great Salt Desert. Tempers flared as wagons broke down and livestock were lost, or stolen, or died from exhaustion. People also died. Some from natural causes (like tuberculosis), while others were shot (by accident) and stabbed (not by accident). As the heat of summer transitioned into the dread of fall, the travelers found themselves in a desperate race to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains before winter conditions turned the high mountain passes into impenetrable barriers. Along the way, 60-year-old businessman George Donner had been elected leader of the group, though he had no trail experience.
On September 26, 1846, the wagon train finally rejoined the traditional westward route. Lansford Hastings’s shortcut had delayed the Donner Party an entire month—with potentially catastrophic consequences. Disheartened, the pioneers followed the well-worn Emigrants’ Trail along the Humboldt River, which by that time of year had been reduced to a series of stagnant pools. As they traveled along the Humboldt, raids by Paiute Indians further depleted their weary and emaciated livestock.
By October, any ideas of maintaining the wagon train as a cohesive unit had been abandoned. Instead, bickering, stress, exhaustion, and desperation split the group along class, ethnic, and family lines. Those travelers who could not keep up fell farther and farther behind. Afraid to overburden their oxen or slow down his own family’s progress, pioneer Louis Keseberg had informed one of the older men, a Mr. Hardcoop (none of the survivors could remember his first name), that he would have to walk. Hardcoop was having an increasingly difficult time with his forced march and eventually he was left behind on the trail. Another elderly bachelor was murdered by two of the teamsters (men tasked with driving the draft animals) accompanying the group.
By the end of October, it still appeared that most of the Donner Party had overcome terrible advice, challenging terrain, short rations, injuries, and death. With the group now split in two and separated by a distance of nearly ten miles, those accompanying the lead wagons stood before the final mountain pass, three miles from the summit and a mere 50 miles from civilization. They decided to rest until the following day. But on the night before they were to make their final push, and weeks before the first winter storms usually arrived, something awful occurred.
It began to snow.
On the morning of November 1, the 59 members of the Donner Party in the lead group awoke to discover that five-foot snowdrifts had obliterated the trail ahead of them, transforming what they had expected to be a final dash through a breach in the mountains into an impossible task. It soon became apparent that there would be no crossing over the Sierras until the following spring. And so the dejected pioneers were forced to turn back, leaving behind the boulder-strewn gap that would become known as the Donner Pass.
A day before our trek across Alder Creek meadow, I had stood with Kristin Johnson and two of her colleagues in the Donner Pass, at the very same spot where the cross-country journey of the Donner Party had come to a halt. Looking down from the mountain, I was suddenly impressed by how resourceful and tough these pioneers had been to have made it even this far.
“I’d have never gotten up here,” I said, before gesturing toward the lake that stretched to the far horizon, far below. “I would have died way down there somewhere.”
Johnson, who I’d only met the day before, thought I was joking, but then the look on my face told her I wasn’t.
The two of us had been corresponding about the famous pioneers for several years, and we’d finally flown into Reno; Johnson from her home in Salt Lake City and me on the Sardine Express out of JFK. After renting a car, we headed into the Sierras to meet up with Johnson’s friends, former private investigator Ken Dunn and Kayle’s human partner, John Grebenkemper. I’d found Johnson to be friendly, funny, and gregarious. She was also a walking, talking encyclopedia regarding anything remotely related to the Donner Party, which was mostly fascinating but could be exasperating as well.