Many of you probably recall how the Donner Party ends up, stranded in the mountains and suffering enormous hardships and tragedy.

This site, The Donner Party by Daniel M. Rosen delves, not just with the tragic portions, but also with the prelude, which makes the ending all the more wrenching.

Courthouse Rock, as drawn by James F. Wilkins in 1849.

“In her 1891 memoirs, Virginia Reed fondly recalled the Platte: “The road at first was rough and led through a timbered country, but after striking the great valley of the Platte the road was good and the country beautiful. Stretching out before us as far as the eye could reach was a valley as green as emerald, dotted here and there with flowers of every imaginable color, and through this valley flowed the grand old Platte, a wide, rapid, shallow stream. … Exercise in the open air under bright skies, and freedom from peril, combined to make this part of our journey an ideal pleasure trip. How I enjoyed riding my pony, galloping over the plain, gathering wild flowers! At night the young folks would gather about the camp fire chatting merrily, and often a song would be heard, or some clever dancer would give us a barn-door jig on the hind gate of a wagon.”

“I have not wrote to you half the trouble we have had but I have wrote enough to let you know that you don’t know what trouble is. But thank God we have all got through and the only family that did not eat human flesh. We have everything but I don’t care for that. We have got through with our lives but Don’t let this letter dishearten anybody. Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can”.

Virginia Reed to cousin Mary Keyes, May 16, 1847[L]
“I will now give you some good and friendly advice. Stay at home,—you are in a good place, where, if sick, you are not in danger of starving to death.”
Mary Graves to Levi Fosdick (her sister Sarah Fosdick’s father-in-law), 1847[162]