Welp. Christmas is over, so all those happy feels, you can forget about ‘em. This is Donner Lake, site of one of the greatest horrors that ever happened in America. (seriously, you've been warned) It was 1846. Ninety pioneers set out from Missouri to take an unusual route to California called the Hastings cutoff which would allegedly save them some time versus the Oregon Trail where they only would have died of dysentery. Instead, they either starved to death, froze to death or were hunted down by the other guys and eaten. Everyone was eaten. See isn’t that a nice picturesque lake, perfect spot for some cabins in the winter time?

The Donner Party expedition was trouble from the start, the biggest takeaway I got from reading the diaries of these guys was that they absolutely hated each other, even from the beginning. There was a big shoving match between some of the more notable guys over who should be leader, and throughout the journey, you had people getting in fights and just taking off and leaving everyone, guys stabbing each other, everyone threatening to hang people. It was just all downhill from here, buckle up. Oh and even starting out some of these guys had tuberculosis. That was the first death, granny.

So they all start out from Independence Missouri, following a svengali by the name of Lansford Hastings who said ‘don’t worry about a thing, I’ll blaze the trail across the great salt lake in utah ahead of you and leave notes nailed to trees and things so you know where to go’. Not everyone thought this was a great plan. James Reed, one of the warring leaders thought it sounded like a good idea though and won this argument, so from Fort Bridger (aside: I’ve mentioned Jim Bridger before, haven’t i? He’s the guy who left Hugh Glass for dead after he got attacked by a bear and Glass crawled two hundred miles back to civilization with a broken leg and his back ripped off) Well Bridger had a hand in convincing the Donner party to take the Hastings cutoff - Bridger was all like ‘oh sure theres lots of water, it’s a totes easy route, friendly indians’. For reference they filmed that crazy sequence from Pirates of the Caribbean where it’s flat white sand for the entire horizon in the salt flats that the Donner party crossed. As they were fighting through the difficult terrain of the Wasatch mountains they could see the salt below them stretching out for ever and they started to realize that they were in a desperate situation. The second TB death happens. The wagons broke through the salt crust on top and sunk into the mud beneath, so everyone was Jack Sparrowing their way across 80 miles of insanity desert. Their cattle ran away from them they were so thirst crazed, or they just died in their tracks still yoked to the wagons, the remnants of whichwere still sitting out there in the desert in 1920’s and I doubt have moved. Six days without water, but no one died.

Instead they all said, ‘we’re gonna kill James Reed for this’.

Actually Reed and another guy got in a fight and Reed killed him with a knife.

“Snyder told that he would whip him, “anyhow;” and turning the butt of his whip, gave Mr. Reed a severe blow upon the head, which cut it very much. As Reed was in the act of dodging the blow, he stabbed Snyder a little below the collar-bone, cutting off the first rib, and driving the knife through the left lung. Snyder after this struck Mrs. Reed a blow upon the head, and Mr. Reed two blows upon the head, the last one bringing him down upon his knees. Snyder expired in about fifteen minutes.”

or

“Reed at this time was on the opposite side of the oxen from Snider, and said to Snider, “you have no business here in the way;” Snider said “it is my place.” Reed started toward him, and jumping over the wagon tongue, said, “you are a damned liar, and I’ll cut your heart out!” Snider pulled his clothes open on his breast and said, “cut away.” Reed ran to him and stuck a large six-inch butcher’s knife into his heart and cut off two ribs.”

So everyone was going to hang him, but instead they banished him into the wild, supposed to be without even a rifle, but one of his kids smuggled him a gun so he could hunt. Reed was all like, screw this lame wagon train and made it to Sacramento in 22 days, although he was very hungry by the time he got there. He knew that there would be trouble back at the wagon train so he tried to organize a rescue party immediately, but the snow had set in and he couldn’t get up the pass again. He’s one of the founding citizens of Santa Clara.

Meanwhile, back at the wagon train from hell, everyone distrusts each other, and won’t even travel together. Everyone’s hungry, the animals are so weak that they can’t pull anything extra. An old man, William Hardkoop age 70 was told that he had to walk or die. Why not both, you say? He walked until his feet split open, but still wasn’t fast enough and the others left him behind to die alone wandering through the forest. Also indian attack! and a man is killed (later one of the pioneer guys confessed on his deathbed to this killing, wasn’t the indians, these guys really hated each other)

And now we come to 7000 ft Donner Pass. This is the low spot in these mountains, but the terrain is unimaginably difficult, and they make it to the lake just as the snow flurries start to fall. Pic related. They can still barely keep this road open in the winter and they have round the clock snow removal. Donner Pass averages 411 inches of snow per year. The record snowfall was in 1938 and 1952 with over 800 inches. That is 70 feet of snow. Also we got winds gusting 100 mph because this is a high mountain pass. All time temperature low record is -45 F.

Into all this roll the surviving Donner party. They had no food, even from the beginning, though they killed all their remaining cattle immediately, recognizing how bad this was going to get. To start out the winter, a guy is accidentally shot and killed by another guy who was ‘loading his gun’. They survived on leather, on mice, on anything. One guy managed to shoot and kill an 800 pound bear. Four men die at the Donner cabin of starvation. Mrs. Reed tries to take her children and hike out, but after four days in the snow have to turn back. Two more people starve to death. It’s decided, the strongest must go get help. 14 pair of snowshoes are made out of the precious ox hide that everyone’s eating, and 17 people are selected to get help, men women and children, everyone with strength left to walk. The ten year olds weren’t given snow shoes. They called this party the “Forlorn Hope”. In three days everyone was snow-blind. Six days in all food was gone. A man fell behind and died. The next they, they started talking about someone should volunteer to die in order to feed the others. Two people died in the night. Problem solved. Now people began to go crazy, one guy stripped off his clothes, ran around like a headless chicken and died. He was eaten. More people died. There was more discussion about killing others, a kindly person warned the targets and they snuck out on their own. Everyone who died was carefully cut up and eaten. Eventually they stumbled on the two who’d managed to sneak away. They shot them and ate them. After 33 days of this insanity, they ran into an indian village, and the indians gave them acorns and grass to eat, and they made it to Sacramento. Five women and two men survived.

But that’s hardly the worst part of this story. Back up in Donner pass,

“Denton with his cane kept knocking pieces off the large rocks used as fire-irons on which to place the wood. Something bright attracted his attention, and picking up pieces of the rock he examined them closely; then turning to my mother he said: “Mrs. Reed, this is gold.” My mother replied that she wished it were bread.“ - Virginia Reed

“Then the little child of Mrs. Eddy who, with her two children, were with us, her husband having gone with the Forlorn Hope, died, and was not buried until its mother died two days later, and they lay in this same room with us two days and nights before we could get assistance to remove their corpses to the snow.” - William Murphy

Meanwhile the first relief party sets out from Sacramento and battles into the mountains for a week to reach the stranded Donner Party:

“19th at sundown reached the Cabins and found the people in great distress such as I never before witnessed there having been twelve deaths and more expected every hour the sight of us appeared to put life into their emaciated frames” - MD. Ritchie & Reasin P. Tucker

“The people were dying every day. They had been living on dead bodies for weeks.” - Daniel Rhoads

“Then they showed us up into their cabins, and we saw the bodies of them who had gone. Most of the flesh was all stripped off an’ eaten. The rest was rotten It was just awful. Ten war already dead and we could see some of ther others was going. They were too weak ter eat, an’ our pervisions bein’ scant, we thought it were best to let ’em go an’ look after th’ stronger ones.” - Riley Moutrey - though this account is disputed as being embellished

The relief party rests for a day or two and then turns around and attempts to take 20 of the strongest remaining women and children out. They’ve got a 7 days hard journey over the mountains, and their first cache of food had been found and eaten by a bear, so they promptly set about starving to death too. The people from the Donner party continue to weaken, and they had to leave one behind alive to die in the snow because he couldn’t walk anymore. Some of the children died. But they made it out to Bear valley where James Reed was leading a second relief party. He and Mrs. James Reed were reunited in what was by all accounts a very touching reunion, but he continued on his way because he had children who were still up there.

Both children were still alive, to his immense joy. “His party immediately commenced distributing their provisions among the sufferers, all of whom they found in the most deplorable condition. Among the cabins lay the fleshless bones and half eaten bodies of the victims of famine.” - J.H. Merryman

Reed takes 21 people out with him and his relief party, with his children and many of the others. He gets caught in a major storm.

“Still Storming verry cold so much so that the few men employed in Cutting the dry trees down have to Come and warm about very 10 minutes, hunger hunger is the Cry with the Children and nothing to give them freezing was the Cry of the mothers with reference to their little starving freezing Children Night Closing fast and with it the Hurricane Increases” - James Reed

Children died, Reed’s cache of food had also been eaten by animals. There was no way to go but out.

“The next they traveled ten miles, and the great toes of many having bursted, they could have been tracked the whole distance by their blood. They now had been four days without provision” - James Reed

Really this just keeps getting worse and worse. Wanna read all the gory details start here at this excellent site.

The Third relief party gathers up the remaining people alive from Donner lake, and it wasn’t pretty lemme tell ya, and there’s a fourth relief party too. It was bad.

Of the ninety who set out, only forty-five people lived.

If you made it this far, the comic is hardly the worst thing you could read today.