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Reasons For The Failure Of The Donner Party

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What would one do if they were trapped in the mountains, barricaded in by snow with no food or water left. The Donner Party was a group of people traveling by wagon to the west. The Donner Party was a left Springfield, Illinois on a journey heading west in the spring of 1846. The Party was led by Jacob and George Donner decided to take the so called shortcut hastings passage. The poor decisions made throughout the journey westward contributed substantially to the failure of this journey westward. One of the worst decisions made was choosing poorly educated and experienced guides, George and Jacob Donner. As Peggy Saari stated in “Great Misadventures: Bad Ideas That Led to Big Disasters,” “neither brother had any mountaineering or frontier …show more content…

They did not expect for the trip to take as long as it did. Before they knew it, they were out of food and supplies. In Peggy Saari Great Misadventures: Bad Ideas That Led to Big Disasters she states, “Worn out and low on food, the group had lost its sense of unity” (95). The Donners did not pack enough food for the journey because they believed that the Hastings passage was a shortcut and would have not taken as long as it did. But in reality the “shortcut” actually took longer than the original path to the west. Before any of them even realized, they were not close to their destination they were out of food. By not packing enough supplies, they were forced to resort to cannibalism in the end. In The Donner Party: A Doomed Journey Tim McNeese stated, “Lacking food and adequate shelter, about half the group died during the winter of 1846-47… some members of the party resorted to eating the bodies of the dead in order to survive” (1). The Donners thought that the trip was much shorter than it actually was because of false advertising. If Hastings had not have told everyone that his passage was a shortcut this possibly could have been prevented. But the leaders of the group were influenced by people like James Reed, Jim Bridger, and Louis Vasquez. These men convinced them that it was a shortcut and they were

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Dillon Edwards Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West, Ethan Rarick, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2008. Desperate Passage is a good book that sheds light on a perilous journey taken by a group of strangers who come together to form a wagon train. It was written by Ethan Rarrick. In the book a group of strangers band together to form a wagon train to make the perilous journey west.

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Why did the Donner Party get stuck in the Sierra Nevada Mountains? In April of 1846 90 emigrants led by Jacob and George Donner left Springfield Illinois in hopes of using a quicker, shorter route to Oregon. The party took the regular trail up to Ft. Bridger, Wyoming. There they were supposed to meet a trail guide, Lansford Hastings, to take them but he was gone, leading another party along the mountains. There was a note for the Donner’s to follow a trail to Weber Canyon, Hasting claimed it was an easier route to Oregon.

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James Reed is said to be the party’s leader, although he annoyed and agitated the members quite often. The Reed family traveled from Illinois. Margaret’s mother was unable to make it to California, however, the rest of the Reed’s managed to survive long enough to complete their

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On our trip to California, we (the Donner Party) were forced to face many unexpected hardships. At Alcove springs Grandmother Keyes died. Just past Fort Bridger we took the Hastings Cutoff, which we were informed saved 400 miles. The information was wrong. The shortcut added 100 miles to the journey.

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The Donner Party The Donner Party shows the next generation of Americans that cutting corners never leads to beneficial outcomes. The Donner Party wanted a shorter route to where they were going and thought it would be a lot easier, but it turned out many of them died and even had to end up eating each other's corps because they were lost, stuck and starving. If they would've took the the long way, those things would've never happened. A group of about 90 pioneers from Springfield Illinois, led by James F. Reed and George Donner wanted to find a better place to live.

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The Donner Party had a great effect on the way pioneers traveled later on in time. The Miller and Reed families left on April 26, 1846 (Rosen). The Donners’ arrive at Independece, Missouri on May 10, 1846 (Rosen). The emigrants who would later form the Donner Party traveled with the Russell Party from Independece, Missouri to Alcove Springs in the Indian territory, which is now Kansas (Rosen). On Sunday November 1, 1846 the Donner Party decided to stay in Nevada for the winter (Rosen).

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