Compare And Contrast The Donner Party And Westward Expansion

The Donner Party and Westward Expansion Since the founding of the country, Americans have had an innate desire to move Westward. Americans justified this endless conquest of Western land by calling it manifest destiny, that they had been chosen for the inevitable job of establishing Western settlements. Thousands of people reached the West Coast and established territories like Oregon and California, which became beacons for people to flock to. Wagon trains set out yearly, carrying emigrants hoping for a better life. The Donner party was one such group yet the struggles they faced would cement their place in American history. The party consisted of ten families along with their hired help, and individual emigrants making eight seven people

Yet in order to reach this promised land, pioneers had to journey thousands of miles over treacherous terrain. The original party of both the Reed family and the families of the Donner brothers, George and Jacob, left Independence, Missouri on May 12th, 1846. Both the Reed and Donner families were upper middle class and had no finical need to move West, unlike many other pioneers. George Donner and James Reed had come to see California as a garden of Eden full of land and sunshine after reading The Emigrants Guide to Oregon and California by Lansford Hastings. The chapters about California go into great detail about the fertile soil, mild climate, and the abundance of resources that can be found there. Hasting goes on to describe the various routes to that emigrants can take to California, as long stretches of green valleys and mountain passes that are easily navigated even with heavy wagons. The most important thing that Hastings writes about is a route that would take parties South of the Great Salt Lake and through the Great South Lake Desert and then Northward to rejoin the California trail. However, Hastings had never actually taken this new route himself. He advertised it in the hopes that it would gain him prominence, and political loyalty, with the emigrants who would live in

The American Midwest is an inhospitable mixture of open plains, rivers, and mountain ranges. Wagons had to Wagon parties had to make it to either Oregon of California before winter or else they would be trapped in the wilderness for months. Timing was critical, parties had to wait to depart after the spring rains or else the trails would be too muddy, but if they waited too long they wouldn’t be able to cross the mountain passes before the were closed by snow. The Donner Party had to forge their own route through Hasting’s Cutoff which cost them most of their supplies and put them at a dangerously slow pace. The most perilous stretch of the Donner Parties journey was Hasting’s Cutoff. It was here that members of the party lost herds of cattle, and some were forced to abandoned their wagons. The Donner Party was told that it would take only two days to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert, instead, it took them five days, and they had run out of water on the third. After surviving the desert, the party had to create a new trail through the Ruby Mountains. Few men in the party were able to participate in the back breaking labor of felling trees and clearing underbrush. After barely making it past Hasting’s Cutoff, the group faced the what that all emigrants on the trails westward feared most, winter had arrived early. Arriving at the Sierra Nevada Pass in late October, and after a night of