The scene of one of the most gruesome tragedies in western history is
named for the two Donner families who were part of a California-bound
wagon train of emigrants that set out across the plains from Illinois in
1846. The Donner Party, beset by great hardships, paused to regroup their
strength at what is now Donner Lake in eastern California’s Sierra Nevada
mountains, only to be trapped by early snows that October. All passes were
blocked deep with snows and every attempt to get out failed. Forty of the
eighty-seven members of the party, which included thirty-nine children,
starved to death during the winter, and the survivors, driven mad by
hunger, resorted to cannibalism before expeditions from the Sacramento
Valley rescued them in April. The Donner Party’s gruesome yet heroic
adventures have figured in much native literature. California’s Donner
State Historic Monument commemorates the event, the Donner Pass today
traversed by U.S. Highway 40.