Donner party
From: J.Butterfield@fresnolibrary.org
In my California History class, our instructor asked us to explain the importance of the Donner party in California history. Aside from it being a morbid and cautionary tale, I am guessing that the CPRR used the same route through the Sierras for the completion of their leg of the transcontinental Railroad. Can anyone comment on this?
—JB
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 3:53 PM
6 Comments:
The route that the Donner Party attempted to use in 1846 was first used by the Stephens Party of 1844, that route, often called the "Donner Trail" is more properly labelled the California Trail or the Overland Emigrant Trail. It is ironic that the trail became known for failure, as thousand of travelers survived the trip.
The CPRR route over Donner Summit parallels the old trail, however the work of the CPRR in the area of Donner Summit was done in 1866-67, some 20 years AFTER the Donner disaster.
I would suggest that your instructor has perhaps not given you sufficient direction as to what he/she is looking for, in the completion of your assignment.
From: "Randy Hees" hees@astound.net
If there was a "importance" beyond the tragic event, it was likely that it emphased how isolated California was...
California was not just a long difficult overland journey away. The state was also guarded by the Sierra of Donner Pass and Death Valley. In the mind of a 19th century traveler these would be the equivalent of the early maps with dragons and sea monsters along the edge; not just a fearsome unknown, but known to be dangerous. Add stories about the Humboldt sink and how difficult the crossing was, fears of Indian attack, and cholera.
An overland journey to California was not easy. This would all have contributed to the arguments in favor of government support for the Pacific Railroad.
—Randy Hees
From: "Wendell Huffman" wendellhuffman@hotmail.com
I suspect the Donner Party experience was not particularly important until well after the fact, when it became useful to those venerating the past as an example of the difficulties of getting to California. And, it became important to the local Truckee tourist business. I think one would want to look first into the history of the telling of the story. I understand that pretty much began with Eliza Donner Houghton, who seems to have been the one to maintain contact among the survivors and later record their memories. I would look, too, into Charles McGlashan's interest in the story. He wrote the first book about it and was (among other things) the publisher of a Truckee newspaper.
At the time of the event, there were few in California, and the event itself was overshadowed by the California revolt. The most obvious immediate response was to motivate subsequent emigrants to hurry along so as to not get caught in the Sierra snows. I believe the Donner experience played a significant role in making Carson Pass the most-used Sierra crossing – as a way to avoid Donner. This happened almost immediately after the Stockton party visisted the Donner camps on their way east in 1847. Indeed, the whole fiasco of the Lassen trail might well go back to J.J. Myers and Peter Lassen's negative impression of the Donner route acquired with Robert Stockton. They were only the third group to visit the scene, after the rescue party and Kearney's eastbound party. I do not know who was with Kearney, but Lassen, Myers, Joseph Chiles, Caleb Greenwood, and Archibald Gillespie were with Stockton, and I suspect they had a lot to do with turning people away from the Truckee. There were still human bones on the ground when they were there. Myers' role in the Lassen trail is recounted in Read and Gaine's Gold Rush (Bruff's Journal).
Another avenue of inquiry which might be of interest is that of the adoption of the name Donner Lake and Donner Pass to what had previously been Truckee Lake and Truckee Pass. This seems to have taken place about the time of the Central Pacific, but I do not know whether it was the railroad which drove this, or if it merely happened simultaneously. In any event, the change in name marks a stage in the growth of awareness of the Donners. It is interesting that the CPRR provided the first general opportunities for the curious to see and visit the scene of the Donner camps. Both Eliza Houghton and Moses Schallenberger rode on the earliest trains to cross the Sierra. The events at/near Donner were very much a matter of discussion among the railroad builders. They applied the name "Donner's Backbone" to what is now called Schallenberger Ridge. That is only meaningful as a macabre joke if you know the story of the tragedy. The Donner Story is told to some degree in the early travel books. It is possible that we wouldn't even know the story had it not been for the railroad and the travel it generated. There were only a few passenger trains that were stuck in the Sierra snows. Two were stranded at Cisco in 1887 for four days. I imagine that the story of canibalism among the Donners was told and retold as they waited for the road to be reopened.
[continued below]
There seems to be a need to associate death with great achievment. It is as if – if no one died, it must not have been important. Or, maybe, we need to make something important if there were deaths to give meaning to the deaths. It always strikes me as odd that people want to know how many were "killed" to build the Central Pacific. We never hear about men landing on the moon without associating it with the death of Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Maybe the Donner story fills some psychological need in providing some specific deaths to link with the opening of the California trail just as the Whitman massacre is associated with the develpment of Oregon. If it weren't for the Donners, I'm afraid few of us could point to anyone else who died trying to open a route to California. (Lucinda Duncan might come to mind since the story of the "maiden's grave" is part of CPRR lore.) Maybe, since we know the Donners, we are spared having to learn about any other tragedy on the trail. The Donners satisfy our obligation to venerate victims and set us free form caring about any of the others.
—Wendell
From: "Wendell Huffman" wendellhuffman@hotmail.com
It would be interesting to know how many argonauts of 1849 refused to return east until the opening of the railroad, so as to avoid the hardships they experienced getting to California in the first place. The "Pioneer special" of September 1869 certainly marks what must have been a grand reunion of old Californians with lost families and friends, but we don't really know how many of those on the train had not gone "home" for previous visits. It surprised me to discover how frequently people did indeed travel back and forth via Panama, and there were many eastward parties on the overland trail over the years.
Another unknown piece of information is the continuation of overland animal/wagon emigration after 1869. It is easy to suppose that this ceased with the opening of the railroad, but I have seen evidence in subsequent Reno (and other) newspapers that animal/wagon emigration never entirely stopped.
—Wendell
From: vandtrr@cs.com
My reading of the Nevada newspapers of the 1870's and 1880's yielded many articles telling of prominent, and even not-so- prominent people, returning home in the east for the first time in 10, 15 and even 20 years. Some of the men even married women in their home towns who they had known before they came west, and brought them back west.
—Charlie
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