n May 1846, the last wagon train of the season left Independence, Missouri for the Mexican territory of Alta California. Led by two men from Springfield, Illinois—farmer George Donner and furniture manufacturer James F. Reed—the Donner Party followed the well-established California Trail as far as the Little Sandy River in Wyoming. It’s there that they made the fateful decision to take a new, more direct route over the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert. The determination was made despite the warnings from accomplished mountain man James Clyman.
The Donner Party followed a path set out for them by by adventurer and guidebook author Lansford Hastings. The Hastings Cutoff was meant to save time by shortening the journey more than 300 miles. Instead, the rugged terrain, lack of natural water sources, and extreme weather conditions proved disastrous for the pioneers. The Donner Party was delayed by three weeks, all while much of their cattle was stolen or killed in raids by Paiute Indians. It wasn’t until early November that they finally began to climb the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
